


A Chipmunk, Really?!

by Still_beating_heart



Series: Yes Really, A Chipmunk [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Derek is full shift, But Canon is whatever I want it to be, Chipmunk Stiles Stilinski, Humor, I don't know what else to tell you, M/M, Oh yeah there are witches, Post-Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), just laugh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:07:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25995709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Still_beating_heart/pseuds/Still_beating_heart
Summary: Stiles gets turned into a chipmunk.  Yep, a chipmunk.--------Well, climbing trees and jumping off leaves and scrabbling around in the woods for like ten minutes is pretty hard work.  And it’s late.  So he’s just going to curl up into a little ball and take a nap.  A short one.  Just enough to recharge for the rest of the ridiculously long trek out of the woods.  It’s just not that long for a human.  With human legs.  And a human stride.  But for a tiny little chipmunk?Stiles hears himself groan, “a chipmunk, really?!”The only sound returned to him in the darkness of the night is that annoying cackle.  Wow, that needs to stop.--------
Relationships: Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Yes Really, A Chipmunk [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1911907
Comments: 89
Kudos: 327





	1. A Chipmunk, Really?!

**Author's Note:**

> This was spawned from a scene in [ this work ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24114517/chapters/58052611) by yours truly, where a chipmunk was the bane of Derek's survival challenge existence. And then a conversation with FiaMac, this was supposed to be a one-shot. Hint: it's not :)

A Chipmunk, Really?!

The night is dark and full of terrors. Except this isn’t Game Of Thrones. Even if one of the witches is wearing a deep red robe. Or maybe it’s not red, it’s just the glow off the pot of bubbling unnatural whatever that is, the cauldron steaming and boiling in the Preserve on a moonless night. 

So scratch that opening. Okay. Try this. Luke Skywalker has returned to his residence, the planet of Tatooine in an attempt to rescue his good friend Han Solo from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt. Admittedly Stiles would make a terrible Luke Skywalker. And Scott would make an even worse Han. And seriously if Jabba jumps (more like rolls) out of any dark corners in the Preserve, well, then count Stiles right out of this quest.

Scratch that one too. Here it is. The biggie. The real one. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… emphasis on the foolishness. 

So here’s the thing. All children, except one, grow up. And the one in this story, is in fact, Stiles Stilinski. The one. Not to be confused with Neo.

He’s out here in the woods on a darkish night. Mostly dark, other then that weird unnatural glow being emitted from the bubbling cauldron in the middle of the witch circle. Or magic circle. Or mages, and warlocks and hags, oh my! Can’t burn ‘em, might as well join ‘em. 

Okay, but, he’s out here alone. Because of the whole never growing up thing. Maybe. Or the whole stubbornness that is him. Or the whole, just wanting to get out and escape the supernatural, and Scott’s girlfriend problems, and Derek’s eyebrows for a night. Just one night! Just one! While his dad is on night shift and nothing insane is bearing down on Beacon Hills. No rogue alphas or any of that. 

It’s a Friday night in the middle of summer. The crickets are chirping, or whatever it is that they do, that sound like they’re playing a violin on their wings. That one. The wind is whispering trances around in the leaves and the stars are extinguished by clouds. Or maybe by the witches. There’s not even a sliver of moon in the sky. That should have been Stiles’s first hint. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge: something wicked this way comes in the Preserve tonight. 

No small, unregarded yellow sun in the western spiral arm of the Galaxy either. Just your normal, average, typical there is weird shit happening in Beacon Hills kind of night. 

Stiles stopped moving as soon as he spotted them. The whole group of them. Horde of them even. Murder, gaggle, pride, swarm, colony, destruction. Insert grouping name here. Whatever they are and whoever they are, they are doing something where they are circled around a bubbling cauldron (or maybe that part is made up, it might just be a campfire), and it involves chanting. Or maybe someone is sitting calmly strumming a guitar as the lady in the hooded sweatshirt warms her hands over the fire that is glowing a normal shade of fiery glows. Like orange, and red, and a soft flickering yellow.

But the whole absence of moon and stars and clouds thing is off-putting. And yes, he’s far enough away from the lights of Beacon Hills (not there’s really enough to completely interrupt the night’s sky anyway) that it’s something else that is very much doing the disrupting. Of the night’s lights. And he’s pretty sure that something is out here. On a cloudless, moonless, starless night. So he came out to investigate (because that’s a better cover than the real reasons), or that’s what he’ll tell his dad when his dad asks him in the morning why his shoes are covered in mud. Or maybe he won’t tell his dad anything. Really, he’ll just tell him he went for a midnight run when he couldn’t sleep.

Okay, okay, so these people are just campers out here. And maybe Stiles has been spending too much time with werewolves, and banshees, and kanimas, oh my. Right? Definitely. Most definite. 

So the solution? Is to quietly walk away from the campsite. Act like he was never here. And go hunt down the real reason behind the weird looking sky at night. Or not. He could really just not do that. Should really just not do that. Really. 

“Oh,” pulls out of his mouth, “no,” gets jerked out of his lungs as he topples over a root in the darkness and goes face first into a tree branch and lands somehow on his ass. 

The rush of movement that follows leaves the woman with the red (maybe it's brown) hoodie standing in front of him, “are you okay?” her eyebrows are knit in concern, the low spark of the fire that is now behind Stiles lighting her face in that totally natural light that has nothing to do with a bubbling cauldron. 

“Yep, fine, just out for a midnight run, and, uh…”

There’s a weird smirk thingy that rises on her face and her hand opens, arm extended towards him. Oh and this is the part where he gets kidnapped. Or the aliens land in the clearing and a weird green light buzzes off all the trees. Or maybe an atom bomb goes off and the world gets taken over by zombies and Stiles and this witch lady are the only survivors. Well, and Peter, because Peter is technically already a zombie, an undead. And Derek because apparently dying at the hands of the alpha pack last Winter just meant that he was reborn as a full shift wolf. What is with the Hales? Are there more? Are they all just walking around as half-charred zombies somewhere? 

He takes the hand the woman is offering and nothing happens. Absolutely nothing happens. Except that she pulls him to his feet and tells him, “come closer to the fire,” so I can cook you, “we’ll make sure that bump on the head isn’t bleeding and we’ll clean that,” she motions to his knees where there are in fact some patches of missing skin. And this is why Stiles wears so many layers! Alright. It’s not because of bad body image or anything. It’s because he is clumsy and he has been all his life and he’ll always be, so he’s prepared to slip and fall and trip and pass out and all those things and the more layers he has on, and the more skin he has covered at all times, it means the less there is to scrape on concrete and gravel, and forest floors, and whatever else he should so trip over. 

But tonight, it was warm out. It is summer. In California. So he’s not wearing layers. He is, in fact, wearing shorts that he was going to sleep in. And a t-shirt. 

How the hell did he land on his butt, but he has scraped knees? 

“Go on,” she urges, her hand fanning out towards the fire where the rest of the coven is sitting on various logs, folding chairs, and toadstools. Maybe not with the toadstools. But if Stiles was a witch, he would sit on a toadstool. 

“So a midnight run, huh?” she motions for him to take a seat in the vacated chair that is at the head of the group. Clearly at the head of it. Like a round table around a campfire only this one feels more powerful than any other location in the circle. It does.

“Yes,” he plops down and feels… nothing. No magic wafting out of it. Damn it, “a midnight run. That is me. Going for midnight runs when I can’t sleep.”

She shrugs, squats down in front of him and the music starts up again. Or maybe it never stopped. It’s very chill, very campfire and woodsmoke type of music. Someone hands her a first aid kit.

“Make sure you put that out before you sleep tonight,” he gestures towards the fire, “fires are a no go around here.”

“Of course Smokey, we’d never leave a fire unattended,” she wipes at his knee with an alcohol swab and he totally doesn’t jerk away at the contact.

“Just stings, a little,” he tells her when she looks up at him, “just the fire, you know, the residents of Beacon Hills,” and by that he means the Hales, “have had bad experiences with fire in the past. So you know, we just like to be careful. We like our tourists to be well aware of the repercussions of something like a forest fire, it would destroy the area. We’re small town, nearly rural and kind of far away from…” he trails off when her eyes lock onto his, his hand darts up to rub at the back of his head, “okay, well, then, I’ll just be on my way.”

“Not so fast,” oh and this is where it’s going to happen. Where he’ll be skinned and roasted on a spit. For sure, “give me your other knee,” she smiles at him.

“Yeah, that. Okay.”

“Owoooooooo!  
Who's that I see walkin' in these woods?  
Why, it's Little Red Riding Hood"

No. That is not happening. The warlock with the guitar is so not singing Sam the Sham right now. No. That’s not even. No.

Stiles can feel his eyes go big, his mouth open and close again, while he just stares at the witch touching his knee.

“What is it you were saying about preventing forest fires Smokey?”

“No, not forest fires, not exactly, um, we’ve not had a forest fire around here. But,” he’s totally ending up in that pot by the end of the night, “are you going to eat me?”

“No, love,” she smirks again, takes something out of her pocket, “we’ll leave that to the big bad wolf,” her evil laugh echoes through the woods and Stiles is suddenly jumping out of the chair, letting it fall to the ground behind him, and running. He’s running to the sound of her laughter and the guy singing.

“Owoooooooo!  
What big eyes you have  
The kind of eyes that drive wolves mad"

The maniacal laughs turns into a cackle. And this time he’s serious. Stiles hears her say something about, “you chatter too much anyway” as he darts out into the darkness of the Preserve and suddenly he’s no longer running on two feet, but on four. Four! 

Shit!

No time to stop now though. No time. Maybe he’s a badass wolf that could totally beat Derek up in a wolf fight. Or maybe he’s a bear! A hulking grizzly that even Peter would run from! Maybe he’s a majestic unicorn.

He hears something come out of his mouth, and it certainly doesn’t sound like anything a person or a wolf or a zombie wolf would be afraid of. 

He runs and runs, and keeps running until he can’t any longer and he’s got to have put on twenty miles by now for how tired he is, but when he stops to catch his breath, and looks around him, he hasn’t gone far at all. He can still hear the cackling of witches and the warlock singing and suddenly everything is so big. Everything is like, holy shit, oh no, oh this is not good. 

He’s miniature. Whatever he’s been turned into, he is tiny. And the witch is coming to step on him, isn’t she? Oh, this is going to be so painful. He needs to run. He needs to run so fast and so far. And maybe he’ll just outrun his new body that is, well, it feels very sleek, it feels like it was built for speed. But it’s so small. And the trees are skyscrapers and the rocks are boulders and this trail is littered with mountains! 

He scrabbles up a root and somehow ends up on a tree branch, he leaps from the tree branch to another one and just barely makes the gap, the giant divide, the grand canyon of trees. Gripping for dear life, he looks at his hands long enough to realize that they are rodent hands. Wow. Really?

“Come on! A rodent?! Really?!”

So not cool. So not cool lady.

Stiles leaps to the next tree and, hey, maybe he’s a flying squirrel at least! When he launches off this one, he just spreads his little paws and flies! He flies! He totally doesn’t fly! 

“Oh shit, oh, I’m gonna die!” but a sapling appears out of nowhere and he grabs it at the very last moment, his heart in his throat and his pulse beating in every inch of his tiny furry body, “so not a flying squirrel. Damn it! I don’t want to be rodent stew! Or a funny hat!” 

The only response is more cackling. Okay, that’s getting old. Really old. 

Stiles huffs towards the sound, feels his tail twitch. Oh, a tail. Yep, he has a tail. And it is not a bushy grey squirrel tail, come to find out, when he looks back at his body. It is a reddish brown tail that is furry and kinda bushy but small and at least he’s not a rat. He jumps across the trail and scampers off into the underbrush. Taking a moment to catch his breath, sitting back on his haunches to look himself over. 

Oh, he’s kinda cute actually. His belly is white and it’s probably so soft. His eyes are fully adjusted to the darkness, either that or the moon came back out. Or he’s still close enough to the fire to be able to see himself. Damn it! 

He takes off again, this time leaving the trail behind and heading through the thickest part of the Preserve. He’s tiny now, he can do that. Take short cuts that aren’t made for humans. He can swing off branches and Tarzan his way through the… “ouch,” as the little vine he was swinging on breaks and sends him hurling into the base of a tree, “damn it. No Tarzan then,” he takes a moment to gather himself, if he was a cartoon there would be stars around his head right now. 

Well, at least when he looks down, he finds a little hole in the ground, right under a tree root. And he can totally hide there for awhile. Just long enough to catch his breath. And figure out what he is. Without ending up witch stew.

He makes himself comfortable in the dead leaves decaying from last Fall. He’s kind of hungry and he can smell acorns. That shouldn’t smell delicious, but it totally does. 

Stiles watches his own little front paws scrape through dirt and leaves and forest debris, until he’s got himself a little burrow under the tree root. It shouldn’t look comfortable. But it does. So he lays down. 

When he turns his head to bite at an itch on his side (what? He’s an animal now, he has no hands, how else is he supposed to scratch an itch?), his new body is reveled to him. Well, maybe he should have looked at his back earlier. It would have very easily revealed the brown, and reddish brown with black and white stripes of a chipmunk. Yes. A chipmunk. A cute, furry, fat-cheeked, hyper-active, bird seed stealing chipmunk. A chipmunk! 

Of all the cool things in the whole wide world this witch could have turned him into. 

Damn it. How is he going to explain any of this to his dad? 

After he takes a nap. Just a quick nap. Then he’ll find Scott, and Derek, along with his pack. And he’ll bring them back to rip the limbs off the witches and warlocks and mages, oh my. 

Well, climbing trees and jumping off leaves and scrabbling around in the woods for like ten minutes is pretty hard work. And it’s late. So he’s just going to curl up into a little ball and take a nap. A short one. Just enough to recharge for the rest of the ridiculously long trek out of the woods. It’s just not that long for a human. With human legs. And a human stride. But for a tiny little chipmunk? 

Stiles hears himself groan, “a chipmunk, really?!”

The only sound returned to him in the darkness of the night is that annoying cackle. Wow, that needs to stop.


	2. How Do You Know I'm A Guy?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [ FiaMac ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiaMac/pseuds/FiaMac) made some adorable art to go with this!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything Stiles says is coming out as chipmunk chatter to everyone but himself. Poor guy. But just imagine that all of his dialogue is squawking chipmunk :)

How Do You Know I’m A Guy?

“Gotta find Dad, gotta find Dad, gotta find Dad, hey, hey, hey, hey.”

It helps to distract. Especially when he’s a tiny furry chipmunk running across a giant street! A giant street with cars! And bikes! And motorcycles! And crazy stay at home moms (who probably have some fancy self proclaimed name they use now instead of stay at home mom) pushing their demon children in strollers down the sidewalk! Running with demon children in strollers. That is the absolute last thing on this Earth that Stiles would ever want to do. He’s pretty sure. 

“Oh, oh,” barely missed getting his tail sawed off my a stroller wheel. And okay, fine, that one kid was kind of cute. 

He skids around the corner of his block just in time to see Dad’s cruiser rolling into the driveway. And he’s planned this, he had all morning running through the Preserve and leaping off giant trees and clinging to leaves to stay alive, to think this through. He’s just going to very calmly approach his father and tell him. Tell him everything. All of it. He’s a smart, loving, and caring man. He’ll understand. And he will not shoot Stiles with a pellet gun before he can tell him all this stuff about werewolves and witches and all that nonsense. 

He’s screwed. He is so screwed. But he’s not going to think about that. Not right now. Because right now, he has to get to the door and stop his dad from going inside. It’s not like he can just jump up there and open the door. And then what if he has to get Dad’s attention after he’s inside? Tap on the window? Yeah, right, that’ll work.

And five minutes later, he is tapping on the window. Sitting on the window sill at the kitchen, where his dad is washing his hands at the sink, and he is tapping. Dad is going to eat something, he’s going to go wash up upstairs, and then he’s going to check on Stiles. And find him not there! Not there in bed on a Saturday morning where he’s supposed to be, and every teen is in bed at this time on a weekend morning. Any morning in the summer, really. At least he won’t have to figure out a way around school anyway. So that’s cool.

“Dad,” tap, “Dad,” tap, “Dad!” tap, tap, tap. Is he deaf or something? What is happening? Stiles stands up on his hind legs, taps dramatically with both front paws and shouts, “Dad!” on repeat until the man finally looks his way , “oh thank all the things,” he sighs when Dad leaves the sink. Craning his head to watch him heading towards the back door. Where he steps out and Stiles jumps down to the floorboards on the porch, “Dad! It’s me! I got turned into a chipmunk! Obviously! But we have so much more to talk…”

“Hi little fella,” Dad coos at him, reaching into his shirt pocket and producing a peanut. A peanut! He squats down on the floor, holds it out like it’s the greatest offering of all time, “come on, I know that’s what you’re waiting for.”

“Dad! It’s me!” why doesn’t he recognize the sound of his own son’s voice?! 

“Come on, I’m not going to hurt you. But if you see Ms Robertson’s cat, you better hide somewhere real quick. Oh, and don’t tell her it’s me that’s been feeding the neighborhood chipmunks, okay? Probably shouldn’t tell my son either.”

Stiles chokes in shock, “me?! What have I ever done to a poor defenseless little chippy? I’d never…”

“Wasting groceries on rodents wouldn’t really be something he approves of,” Dad shrugs. 

“Oh, that, yeah. That probably is something I wouldn’t approve of. But it’s one peanut. Seriously, how much have you been feeding the chippies?”

“And don’t tell him about that whole bag of bird seed you and your friends polished off in one sitting either,” he wiggles the peanut.

“Oh fine. I am kind of hungry. Only one? Really? You really think that’s enough for my growing frame?”

Stiles inches forward, his claws scrabbling at the deck boards underneath him, sniffing the air between him and his dad, “you’re a chatty little guy, aren’t you?”

“How do you know I’m a guy, huh, Dad? It’s not like you can see my genitalia. Do I even have any? How do chipmunks reproduce? Well, they’re mammals, so…”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met such a chatterbox,” he wiggles the peanut again and Stiles creeps towards it, reaching a single paw out first to touch it. When it’s not yanked away, and his dad’s boot doesn’t raise up and squish him dead, he decides it’s safe to go for it. Standing on his dad’s palm and gnawing away at the shell, “mighty forward of you to sit on my palm for your meal,” there’s a laugh in his voice. And Stiles wonders if this is how he’s going to spend eternity eating his meals. Doomed to sit in his dad’s palm forever. 

It could be worse. He could be an actual rat, not a tree rat. Dad would never let a real rat sit on his palm. Stiles cranes his head to watch his dad’s face as he makes quick work of the peanut shell. Okay, these teeth are kind of badass. And the salty goodness of the shell is exactly what he needed. He might need some water though. What else is he supposed to eat? Can he just forage through people’s garbage? Is bird seed going to suffice? Can he find enough acorns in the Preserve?

His dad’s face is soft, sighing lightly when he admits, “Claudia used to love watching the baby chipmunks in the Spring. Racing and chasing each other around. She never minded that you little creatures would raid her bird feeders.”

“Of course she didn’t,” Stiles sighs, remembering it now. Sitting on the porch with Mom and her bird book, checking off yet another kind of finch while the baby chipmunks scrambled around, picking up fallen seeds on the ground and chattering at each other. Oh. That’s what Stiles sounds like, isn’t it? He’s a chattering chipmunk. Great.

“Alright, well it’s been fun Dad, but I have to get to Scott’s and tell him what happened and hope that this keen werewolf senses can understand chipmunk so he can sneak in and leave you a note that Stiles is in fact sleeping at Scott’s for the duration of the weekend, maybe week, and he’ll text you later. K?” he tucks the peanut into his cheek, “k,” and bounces off Dad’s hand to scamper across the porch and launch himself into the bushes. 

———————

He forgot something. Something very important that his dad said. 

He’s running full speed across the deck floor of Ms. Robertson’s, thinking nothing more than, “gotta find Scott, gotta find Scott, gotta find Scott, hey, hey, hey, hey,” when he remembers, “cat!” and comes a screeching halt about two feet away from the hulking beast of a cat that must be about seven hundred years old by now. It’s probably the cat that the devil possessed in Fallen. 

Her eyes stay closed. Thank all things. Stiles remembers seeing plenty of tailless chippies in the neighborhood and he knows it’s all because of that cat. 

So now, to back up, and get away without being heard or spotted by the evil Lucifericious cat. He takes a quiet step backwards. Her tail rises, and twitches and flops back down. Oh, shit, she heard him, and now she’s just fucking with him, isn’t she? Isn’t that just a typical cat thing to do? No wonder Derek hates cats. Not that he couldn’t just snap one’s neck without even exerting any effort, but they are some vicious, “oh shit!” the cat’s green eye slides open.

“Oh shit!” Stiles dives off the porch into a raspberry bush, “ow, ow, ow,” the fur on his belly is so not thick enough to protect him from the tiny but plentiful thorns of a raspberry bush. No time to lament his torn up belly. No time at all! There’s a viscous cat after him! He must run! 

He darts under the porch, through the lattice and out the other side. Turning his head back just in time to see that the evil feline is, um, still sleeping. 

“Okay, so lamest escape scene ever. But I was pretty sleek, wasn’t I?” he leans back on his back legs to fist pump the air, remembering he still has that peanut tucked into his cheek, “hungry,” he pushes it into his mouth and takes one end with his paws to sit and eat his spoils. 

——————

“Onward,” he decides. It’s probably too late anyway. His dad has already found the empty bed. And has probably already called Melissa. Oh sweet Melissa, please be on a double shift. Please. Because then Dad will call Scott. And Scott will lie. Because lie and Stiles have become synonymous in Scott’s head by now, right? Right. 

Who is he kidding? Scott is a terrible liar. Well, there was that one time. And that other time. And the whole last few months of keeping all the supernatural secrets. So, he’s not that bad. Or maybe Melissa and Dad have already decided their children are lying about something, something big and they just haven’t figured it out yet, or they have and they’re the ones fucking with Scott and Stiles now! Really, what is the likelihood of Dad being a cop and Melissa being a nurse for so long now in Beacon Hills complete with the Hale family of werewolves, without having some kind of inkling at the very least? It is low. The likelihood is low. 

———————

It is a piece of cake to climb the tree beside Scott’s window and peer inside. Scott’s phone is ringing on his nightstand. Scott’s phone is ringing, and when Stiles twists his head around to see it clearly, he sees ‘Stiles’s Dad’ on the screen, “pick up Scott. Pick up, come on good buddy, pick up and lie. Lie for me!” 

Scott’s body stretches under the sheets and Stiles leaps from the tree to the window where the thing is open and the screen has a hole in it. Maybe he can pick away at that hole until it’s big enough for his little bitty body to fit through, “Scott! Scotty! Scott! Scott!”

He twitches, his hand darts out and he grasps his phone, accepts the call and brings it to his ear, “Stiles’s Dad?… yes, um, yes sir, he’s here.”

“Oh thank all the things Scotty boy,” Stiles reaches out and tugs at the screen, where the hole is. 

“His phone is dead,” now he’s sitting up and looking around the room like he actually expects Stiles to be there. Okay, they really need to stop with all the lying all the time. It is getting bad, “still asleep. Okay, I’ll have him call or text you later. Text, probably so he doesn’t wake you up… Okay, yes sir,” he puts the phone down and searches the room again with a confused puppy look on his face.

“Oh Scotty. My loyal and best friend. Or only friend. Hey! Over here!” he shouts it when Scott cocks his head and lets his supernatural werewolf hearing kick in, “at your window! It’s me!” Stiles sits back on his haunches and taps his chest, “It’s me! I got turned into a chipmunk after I stumbled into a coven of witches and warlocks! Scotty!” 

Scott’s eyes land on Stiles. Confused puppy. Oh no, “hi there, what are you doing all the way up here?” oh no, he’s using Calm Vet Voice on him as he nears the window and pushes his fingers against it, “hi little buddy,” his fingers glance off Stiles’s belly.

“Come on Scott! It’s me! It’s Stiles! Use your super senses!”

“Are you hungry? There’s fresh compost out there, I just brought it out last night.”

“Um, ew. Damn it Scotty! It’s me! Why aren’t you hearing me?”

His finger scrapes up and down Stiles’s chest, and that feels pretty good. But no! This could get really awkward. Scotty is smiling and telling Stiles, “don’t pick at that screen. We can’t afford a new one. Plus, my mom would freak out if a chipmunk got in the house.”

“Really Scott, do you know your mother at all? She would probably just shoe it out with a broom or something and not bat an eyelash over it. This is the woman that cleaned that dead mouse out of the refrigerator coils when we were kids, remember that gross corpse? That was so gross. It was like half-burned and half-rotten. We smelled it for like a week before she finally found it back there. Yuck,” Stiles shudders at the memory, “and she did it with her bare hands Scott! Her bare hands!”

“You’re a chatty little girl aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?! A girl!”

“You’re so cute,” he grins, pats the tip of his finger down on Stiles’s chest and walks away.

“Bastard!”

———————

“Gotta find Derek, gotta find Derek, gotta find Derek, hey, hey, hey, hey,” Stiles sings as he darts down the middle of the sidewalk. Because Derek is his last hope. His final hope. Because Derek has been a wolf since birth. Or has he really? Was he born a wolf, like fur and teeth, and four paws and everything? Or was he born a human baby? So maybe he’s only had since puberty to work on his super senses. Not his entire life. Either way, it’s him or it’s Peter who has had the most time to hone those suckers, and well, when choosing between bad and worse, then the choice is clear. Derek.

Maybe the sidewalk isn’t the safest from things like humans. But it’s probably safer from things like cats. And dogs. Okay, so it’s not, it’s totally not and that hound dragging that little Ellis girl down the sidewalk towards him to snap him up in his jaws is going to catch him! 

Stiles leaps off the sidewalk, skitters across the street, narrowly avoids a truck tire, and launches himself at a tree.

“Get out of here! Go home! Take your kid and go home!” he shouts at the dog when she drags the kid across the street at the end of her leash. Damn it! The dog is jumping and barking and snapping at the base of a tree. Stiles sticks his tongue out, “can’t climb trees, can you? Ha!” and then he skitters across the branch and flies over to the next tree.

So safest course of action? Tree jump all the way to the loft. Or the Preserve. Or the old Hale house. Damn it! There are too many options of broodpoint for a broodywolf to be brooding!


	3. Acorn Ammo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The **'s denote POV changes. It'll mostly be Stiles and Derek throughout. I usually just switch chapters with POV changes, but they'll be too short to be chapters for this one.

Acorn Ammo

Stiles is dying. He is literally dying. His little chipmunky heart is exploding in his chest. And he is so hungry. He just ran all around Beacon Hills for hours, or days, or maybe his entire life! Just to find Derek’s chosen brood location for the day. He’s back where he started now. Well, he’s back to his second chosen point. The old Hale house. Because his first choice was the loft. Especially after Scott took off on his bike, headed towards it, but was already gone again by the time Stiles got there. The only standing thing in there was the zombie wolf himself. And Stiles is not going to go to him unless he absolutely has to. 

He went from there to the Hale house. And found Derek’s clothes. All folded up all nice and neat on the stairs. Because apparently having nice, neatly folded clothes sitting outside a fire ravaged structure is important when you shift into a wolf and go running around the Preserve. 

So then he scampered around in the Preserve, jumping from tree to tree and perfecting his chipmunk ninja skills, until he got so tired. Just way too tired to do anything else. 

So he took a nap. Woke up hungry and hunted down some acorns. Acorns are gross. They are gross. So he found some berries. That he’s pretty sure are edible. But he supposes he’ll find out soon enough.

And now he is sitting in a tree keeping watch over Derek’s clothes because he’ll return at some point, right? Unless he’s dead. Or kidnapped. Or naked and tied up in the basement by that psycho Argent bitch. Maybe he should check.

Or no! Nope, not checking. Because there is broodywolf himself. Stalking on all fours with a bundle of Stiles’s clothes and hopefully his phone grasped in his teeth. Oh thank Hale.

He watches as Derek drops his loot on the step near his own clothes. And waits. 

And keeps waiting.

And waits some more.

But the bastard doesn’t change back! What is he doing! What the Hale is so important to stay wolfed out for right now if he knows that something happened to Stiles? He knows it and he’s just going to sit there all pretty and ignore it! He needs to change back! He needs to change back and use his human self to use Stiles’s phone to text his dad. Before his dad has a heart attack because Stiles has been missing all day!

Damn it Derek! 

Stiles chucks an acorn at him. And hits him square between the shoulder-blades. He sits back on the branch and fist pumps. That’ll work. That’ll get his attention. Or wait, maybe that’s not good. Oh no, oh Hale, oh he’s going to turn around and leap up the tree and eat Stiles in one furry gulp and he’ll still be alive when he hits bottom and he’s going to have to claw his way out of Derek’s stomach! Oh, that was bad, that was a bad idea.

**************

Derek found Stiles’s pile of clothing near an old campsite that smelled like magic. When Scott called him this morning, he volunteered to scan the Preserve. Knowing he’d be able to do it faster than any of the others. Using the scent he memorized a long time ago. That doesn’t mean Stiles is special, he has all the pack member’s scents memorized. And some non-pack members as well. 

Never mind that the smell of Stiles is more like the smell of Home than anything has been in Derek’s life for a long time now. 

He tried to track down the source of the magic but lost it at the creek. They knew he’d come, and they threw him off on purpose. Stiles’s scent hadn’t followed them towards the creek though, so he wasn’t being held captive. 

Derek used his phone to text his dad when he picked it up. Told him he was taking an impromptu camping trip overnight with Scott and Isaac, his reception was too bad to call him, but he’d be in contact. Derek knows which parts of the Preserve have shitty enough reception for that excuse to work, so if the sheriff were to trace his son’s location before the phone was turned off, he’d find that he was in exactly a spot where kids like to camp that has shitty reception. 

He hates lying to these kids’ parents. But until they can come clean about the supernatural, then it’s just a part of being the pack leader. 

Now that Derek is back at the old house, he can smell Stiles. His thick, enticing, anxious and nervous, slightly chemical undertoned scent. Chemical from the Adderall. 

Derek sits back, lifts his snout and sniffs the air. It’s Stiles, but something else too. Something more a part of nature. And peanuts. Derek snorts, tips his chin back down and sniffs at the ground to cleanse his palate. Then something hits him between the shoulder-blades. He barely feels it past the thick fur of his coat. 

He should probably shift back, call Scott and have him meet him out here. He’s not sure why Stiles is hiding, but his scent is definitely thick enough that he’s back here. Maybe something bad happened, and he’s embarrassed to show Derek. A shudder rips down his spine and he starts to shift, but pauses when he hears a gulp. A quiet gulp, and a squeak, and a, “that was stupid, please don’t eat me Derek, don’t gulp me down whole in one bite. I will claw my way out of your intestines and you will regret it if you eat me!”

Derek lets the shift fail, sits back and tips his head towards the sound of Stiles’s distinct voice. 

“Derek?” something bounces off his coat again, this time near his shoulder, “can you hear me? Derek?” an acorn comes sailing through the air, bounces off his snout and makes him sneeze.

And Stiles laughs. And a chipmunk falls out of a tree. 

************

“Derek?” Stiles is certain the asshole can hear him. Why isn’t he doing anything? Why isn’t he shifting back? He could talk back to him if he shifted back. He can use human words, but what if he can only understand Stiles when he’s a wolf? Oh Hale. This sucks! He grabs another acorn and chucks it at Derek on principle, “can you hear me? Derek?”

Oh shit. The last piece of ammo hits the wrong target. Derek’s nose! Oh shit. Stiles is going to get eaten for sure. And then Derek sneezes. And he looks so perturbed by it! It’s hilarious how many of Derek’s expressions transfer to his full wolf face! And a perturbed wolf does not look at all majestic!

Stiles clutches at his belly, hey that fur is pretty soft, as he laughs. The wind blows, shakes the branch he’s on and oh, oh no, he doesn’t reach out quick enough to grab on! He’s falling! He’s falling through the air and bouncing off the tree bark on the base of it and almost gets a hold of it, but not quite. Enough to slow down his chipmunk pancake speed, landing in a fern and those things are so not as soft as they look by the way. They’re kind of prickly. Bastards. 

Something comes out of his mouth. Something that even sounds like a chipmunk squeak to his own ears! Oh no. This is bad. This is so bad, “Derek?!”

The man appears. He appears in full man glory, with all the wonderfully styled stubble and drawn eyebrows, like he’s floating above Stiles. If Stiles was a cartoon right now he would have dancing sourwolves spinning around his head. 

“I squeaked.”

“You fell out of a tree.”

“You can hear me?! You can hear me!” he’d get up. And maybe do a victory dance. But his head hurts. From that massive fall.

“Yeah. I can hear you,” he looks very unbothered by this. This! Stiles is a chipmunk! 

“Aren’t you at all curious about what happened?”

“No,” his arms cross over his bare chest. And oh Hale, he is naked. Of course he is naked and having a totally normal conversation in the woods with a chipmunk. What could possibly be weird about that?

So Stiles realizes just a little late that he’s lying on his back. With his belly and throat completely exposed. He’s not very good at this whole mammal in nature thing, “I submit wolf. No more acorns. Pick me up. Please.”

Derek’s face does something that Stiles has never seen it do before. The corners of his mouth lift. His eyes twinkle. 

“Oh my Hale! Is that a smile?!”

Derek opens his mouth to respond, but Stiles wasn’t done talking yet! 

“Deny it all you want crabbywolf, but that expression that is on your face is a smile!”

Oh, and now his warm hand is sliding under Stile’s back, and lifting him off the ground. That is dizzying. Stiles paws shoot out and grab his thumb. 

“Dude. Slowly.”

He brings his hand up towards his face, leans in close, sniffs him. Sniffs him? Yep. Sniffs him. And then sighs, sets Stiles on his shoulder and heads over to his clothes.

“What’s with the sniff?” Stiles grabs onto whatever he can grab onto, because this feels like a very precarious position to be in, “don’t believe it’s me? Need to use your super-sniffer to tell? Because news flash buddy - no one else in the whole history of ever would get themselves turned into a chipmunk!”

Derek snorts out a laugh, reaches up and plucks Stiles off his shoulder to set him on the pile of his own clothes. Stiles does not squawk at that. Except he totally does. And then he face-plants into his clothes, darts round until he finds his phone. Not casting sideways glances at Derek the whole time that he’s putting his clothes on because that would be totally inappropriate. But seriously, talk about a specimen so perfect that it makes all other creatures feel completely inadequate, and the totally unrequited feelings that Stiles has had for Derek from the start are so not getting bigger and more ridiculous when he watches him naked. Totally not at all. 

Derek has a smirk on while he pulls his boxer briefs up his legs. Is he mind-reading? Does he have full-shift super-mind-reading skills now too? Because that would be, oh there’s his phone. Damn it! His paws just skid along the screen, unable to even get the damn thing to light up!

“Derek. A little help here.”

“I already texted your dad. He thinks you are on a camping trip.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks. I guess.”

“You need to tell him Stiles.”

“Oh, I tried Derek! I tried,” he scampers out of the sleeve of his t-shirt, “he couldn’t understand a word I was saying and he gave me a peanut.”

“Anybody want a peanut?”

“No more rhymes now, I mean it!” and then a super hard inhale, because Derek?! Derek Hale just Princess Brided it?!

“It was my mom’s favorite.”

“Mine too! I mean, my mom’s too!”

Okay, is he just taking pity on Stiles right now because he’s about to die or something? Is there like a witchy bubbling cauldron spell that turns people into tree rats and then they spontaneously combust after twenty four hours without a cure?

“It’ll wear off,” he sounds pretty sure about that.

“Are you sure? Or are you bullshitting me?” Stiles hops over to the pocket of Derek’s jeans while he’s pulling his t-shirt on, “got any food? I’m starving.”

Derek tugs his shirt down, unfortunately, and then flicks - yes flicks! - Stiles’s rump, “off,” and yanks the jeans out from under him. 

“Jerk!”

“There’s food in the car. We’re meeting Scott at Deaton’s.”

“You don’t like Deaton’s.”

“I don’t like,” he pauses, is it just easier to talk to Stiles when he’s a chipmunk? Is that all it took, was some fur and some cute cheeks and a tiny body? “never-mind, just,” his fingers are suddenly sliding under Stiles’s belly again, depositing him on his shoulder that this time is easier to hang onto with the whole shirt and all.

He doesn’t make Stiles move once he’s in the driver’s seat of the Camaro either. He reaches over to the passenger side and grabs a bag of granola. Granola?! Seriously?! 

“You going to drive a Subaru and wear socks with sandals now too?” but Stiles doesn’t hold back, he dives right into the bag.

Then gets pulled right back out by the tail, “tail! Ow! Derek you know what it is like to have a tail! But the big bad wolf hasn’t met anyone big enough or bad enough to pull his tail, has he? Damn it!” now he’s being set in the cupholder. And the granola is being dumped into the cupholder with him, “dignity? Why I’ve never met such a thing,” doesn’t mean he won’t pack his cheeks full though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I just met the Stiles version of real life chipmunk - it just ran up to my cat, sniffed her tail, darted back and shouted at her from about six inches away and then took off :)
> 
> Speaking of Princess Bride... if you loved that movie or book and you love to read fanfic fusions then check out [ As You Wish ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23058259/chapters/55151419) by [ FiaMac ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiaMac/pseuds/FiaMac) , it's totally worth the read!


	4. And Then I Was A Chipmunk

And Then I Was A Chipmunk

Deaton’s was a bust. Well, unless one were to count a lot of arguing, weird eyebrow gestures, and silent discerningness aimed at Derek. And a lot of Scott reaching out to scratch Stiles’s chin like he’s actually a furry little rodent and not his best friend stuck in a rodent’s body! And some pouting because if anyone should be able to understand Stiles it is Scott, his best friend for life. 

So now Derek is tracking the witches again and Stiles is with Scott. Even if Derek is the only one that can understand him, Derek said he wouldn’t be safe at the loft without anyone there who knew who he was (and point there, Derek Hale) but sitting here with Scott isn’t exactly exciting either. It only took maybe two minutes before he was on Allison this, Allison that. And Stiles can’t even interrupt him! With anything more than what sounds like chipmunk chatter, apparently. And that only serves one purpose. To make Scott smile! 

So Stiles is sitting on Scotty’s desk, manhandling an apple. Okay, fine. It’s more like a tiny chunk of apple, perched between his front paws, while he tries really hard to eat it without dropping it. And who knew an apple could take so much focus to eat!

It’s dark out. Nothing from Derek. Stiles didn’t expect it, really. But he hoped. He kind of wants to talk to his dad. And he’s had all day to think about this, he’s ready to explain it all. And Dad will totally believe him. He knows he will. And if he doesn’t, then Derek can just shift right there in front of him. Right? Right. He won’t shoot him. Not if he’s a very tame and very beautiful full-bodied wolf. 

Scott gets a text around ten, and smiles at his screen for about three hours before he reaches out to scratch Stiles’s chin.

“Enough with that good buddy,” Stiles would throw something at him, but all he has is that apple. And he’s hungry. And only so much fits in his cheeks.

“Sorry, I have to go meet Allison. Okay? I mean, we told your dad that we were out camping, so if I’m home when Mom gets home, that’ll throw off the plan. And maybe I should just tell her we’re camping and then go stay with Allison. Or maybe Allison wants to go camping!” about a hundred lightbulbs flicker on over his head.

“Scott! No, that is a terrible, terrible plan! You can’t leave me here alone to face your mom! I need to eat. And I need to use the bathroom! Wait, how do I flush the toilet? Okay, not now. Don’t go!”

——————

Stiles watches from the window as Scott waves at him, starts up his bike and leaves, “asshole.”

It’s not ten minutes later that Melissa pulls in the driveway while Stiles is trying to figure out how to open the fridge. Or maybe he can just find a way through the tubes and plumbing and, no, that’s probably what the mouse thought when it became half-charred corpse back there. So no.

“Excuse you,” comes a voice from behind him.

“Melissa! It’s me! It’s,” a broom makes contact with him. It’s not rough. But it’s not exactly leaving room for argument.

“Shoo, I know you’re cute, but you don’t belong inside,” as she’s scooting him out the door, “I need to tell John to quit feeding the chipmunks,” she shakes her head, “poor little things. It’s confusing when humans give you mixed messages, isn’t it? Scott just brought the compost out last night, have a feast,” she waves at him as she pulls the door shut.

“Damn it! I don’t want compost! I want a burger. And fries. And a milkshake,” he darts off the porch into the darkness, “my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.”

************

Derek gives up on the witch trail around two in the morning. Slinks his way back to the old house, forcing himself to ignore the dampness in the air with an oncoming storm and the way it brings the scent of the fire right back up from the Earth like it just happened yesterday. 

He takes a moment to bathe in the rain when it starts to softly fall all around him. Letting it dampen his coat and rinse his paws before he shifts back. Slipping under the eave of the porch remains to put his clothes on. When he reaches for the stack there’s a squawk and a chipmunk skittering up his arm.

“Stiles,” he sighs.

“Dude, I was just napping. And your shirt is so soft.”

“You can talk quieter when you’re right next to my ear.”

“Oh,” he yawns, starts to settle on the meat of Derek’s shoulder, curling up into a ball, licking his lips and drifting right back into sleep.

——————

“Dear nephew, do tell. Why do you have a chipmunk on your shoulder? And why must you go shirtless at all possible junctures to remind us just how many abs you do have?” Peter leans back against the counter when Derek walks into the loft soon after the sun rises, “on second thought, don’t tell,” grabbing the bagel out of the toaster when it pops, hooking his keys on the way out and leaving.

Derek understands why no one likes Peter. But Peter is all he has left. And somewhere under all that trauma is the guy he remembers hiding from hunters with when he was young. The cool, older brother figure that taught him to drive and flirt with girls. 

In his bedroom he gently lifts Stiles off his shoulder, wraps him in the shirt he was sleeping in, and sets him on the bed. 

************

Uh oh. This is happening. This is going to have to happen. 

Derek wouldn’t care, Stiles is sure, if he just pooped in a plant. He probably wouldn’t even notice. But Stiles cares! Stiles needs to feel like a human and do his business in a toilet! Even if he peed a few times yesterday out in nature and it was easy and, okay he does that when he’s a human too, it’s just a thing. But the number twos? Maybe if he was currently out in the woods and could just drop it while running, it’d be fine. But he’s not currently out in the woods. He is, in fact, in Derek’s bed, wrapped in Derek’s shirt. And it’s so comfortable and it’s soft and smells like Derek, but this is not where he is going to move his bowels. Obviously. 

He launches himself off the bed, slips under the door of the bathroom, realizes that Derek is in the shower. Because of course that is Stiles’s luck. But he makes it to the toilet in time! And over the sound of the water, no way is Derek going to hear it. 

He just needs to figure out how to flush the toilet now. Well, really, there’s like nothing in there. It’s kind of a waste of water, but seriously. He’s not an animal. He is a human. With dignity. He sits back on the toilet seat, twiddling his fingers, then decides his only course of action is to just go for it. Leap.

Leap he does. And his body weight does push the handle down! What a beautiful thing an old toilet is. One of those old rundown toilets with the loose handles that require zero effort to push down on, and Stiles probably gave Derek crap about not updating the bathroom when he moved in. But he’s glad now. 

Until he slips off the handle because of the shower steam! At least he has enough time to tuck and role, but the, “oomph,” that escapes him gets Derek’s attention at the same time the toilet flushes. Chipmunk ninja fail.

His face, dripping with water, appears from where he’s parted the curtain, “Stiles.”

“Derek,” ducking behind the sink, finding a pipe to scamper up, tossing himself at the sink handle to start the water and wash his hands. Of course. The sink handle however, is not as loose as the toilet handle. He bashes his head off it, gets catapulted off towards the wall and slides down it, gripping for dear life in attempt to find anything to hold onto. And fails. Melting into a puddle of fur and bonelessness on the tiles. 

Derek snorts in amusement. Then disappears again.

“I’m glad my pain is entertaining for you!”

**************

Stiles is sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, cereal spilled all over it, pawing through it and shoving his cheeks full when Derek goes downstairs.

“Stiles,” he sighs, pulling the coffee pot out.

“Oh, coffee, you think I can drink coffee without having a chipmunky heart explosion! I love coffee Derek.”

“No. You shouldn’t even be drinking coffee as you. Much less a chipmunk.”

“Stop with the killer eyebrows dude, it’s too early for that.”

“It’s noon.”

“Oh,” his head swivels towards the clock on the wall, “it is 11:57 actually.”

Derek rolls his eyes, and pointedly ignores everything Stiles says for the next ten minutes. 

———————

On the walk back to the campsite, Stiles alternates between riding on Derek’s shoulder and leaping around in trees. He’s mildly more coordinated with his new body than Derek thought he’d be.

“Having fun?” Derek wonders when he comes to a halt near the site, Stiles leaping off the tree and landing on his head, scampering down to his shoulder.

“Yes,” he responds, directly into Derek’s ear. And then snickers, “that’s for grabbing me by the tail yesterday,” his paws are up near his mouth, Derek can hear his tongue flicking out to wet them before he combs them through his hair.

“You can shower, you know.”

“And get washed down the drain? I don’t think so…”

“Alright,” Derek snorts, settling on the upturned log near the fire ring, “tell me everything you remember.”

************

“And then I was a chipmunk,” he’s suddenly gotten very distracted by the scent of Derek right in that spot where his ear becomes his jaw and his stubble takes over. It is all he can do to keep his nose out of it.

Derek sits for awhile, silent and brooding. Silent for long enough that Stiles stands up on his back legs, getting himself level with the big guy’s eyes. Holy Hale are those things insane up close. 

“What in the flying squirrel color are your eyes anyway, Derek?” 

When Derek gets to his feet, Stiles has to put his front paws down on his cheek to stay steady. He shrugs his response, which doesn’t help matters either, making Stiles grip his stubble to hang on.

“They’re, like, all the colors that an eye could possibly be.”

He flashes his red alpha eyes just for the dramatic effect, “okay no need to show off,” Stiles sits back, curls into himself on the pillow that is Derek’s shoulder, “all these muscles are nice Derek, they’re very comfortable.”

——————

Stiles startles awake when Derek comes to a halt, “this is where I lose their trail.”

Stretching his body along the length of Derek’s shoulder and yawning, “it’s okay Big Guy, coming back to it again and again isn’t going to change that. Let’s head back and research.”

“Research?”

“Yeah. You know, that thing that people do when they need information about things. Things they can’t just solve with steel fists and iron chests.”

“You wanna go back to your dad’s?”

“I could use your computer. If you had one. You old stone aged weirdo! Hey, you know what? I dig tunnels underground! I do! Not Peter!”

Derek’s eyebrows are very much accusing Stiles of being a crazy person. 

“I’m a chipmunk Derek.”

“I can see that,” he stoops to the ground, his fingers tracing over a footprint in the dirt, “it rained yesterday.”

Stiles hops off his shoulder, inspecting the footprint himself. Bare foot. In the woods, “sure did Derek.”

“Which means these are fresh,” now his eyebrows are accusing Stiles of being slow.

“That is correct Derek. I was waiting for you to come to that conclusion,” he licks his paw and slicks his hair back. And his paw tastes like Derek smells. So he doesn’t lick it again. Except that he totally does.

And while he’s all wrapped up in not licking his paws, Derek is changing into a wolf. 

“Oh come on! Now you can’t talk back to me! What are we doing? Where are we going? Do I have to…” he squeaks when Derek’s big teeth are clamping down on the back of his neck, “oh my Hale, please don’t kill me. I swear I would make a terrible feast. I would rip you apart Derek!” and then something even less dignified comes out of his mouth as he’s flung through the air and lands on Derek’s back, “oh. I’m going for a ride. You could have told me that, you know, before you shifted!” 

Entwining his tiny fingers into Derek’s ruff, he’s only given enough time to grip tight before they’re off, “oh my god Derek! Oh my god, this is horrible, this is too fast, this is scary, this is awful,” he feels his back feet gripping to Derek’s fur too, taking a moment to look around and watch the scenery as it whirs by. The wind in his fur. The feel of Derek’s strong body beneath him and, “this isn’t so bad,” hunkered down right between his shoulder blades, “but you should have a collar. With little handles on it. If we’re going to make a thing of this.”

Derek snorts, leaps over the creek and lands gracefully on the other side, his snout leading the way. 

It’s nearly dusk by the time Derek stops again, and Stiles is so not singing Sam The Sham either. But he’s hungry. That’s for sure. 

And suddenly wolf Derek is man Derek. And Stiles is sitting on his shoulder blades where he’s crouched belly down on a rise in the woods, “shh,” he tells Stiles immediately when he has his voice back. 

“Did you find them?”

“I think so,” he creeps forward in a low crawl, cranes his neck and nods, motioning towards the little drop in front of them. He’s silent, and still. For a long time. So long that Stiles has to climb up his neck and onto the top of his head to look where he’s looking. 

“Yep that’s them,” he leaps off Derek’s head and goes charging through the underbrush, down the side of the hill, and heads right over to them. Even though he can hear Derek holler-whispering at him through clenched teeth.

“Hey! Hey witch woman! Down here!”

The witch looks around, pretending she doesn’t see him until he picks up a pebble and chucks it at her. So maybe that’s not what got her attention, maybe it was the big black wolf stalking down the hill, snarling at her. That was probably it. Now that he thinks about it.

“Hey! It’s me! And that’s my wolf. And I’m here for… oh shit,” he gets scooped up again. This time by the witch’s guitar-playing sidekick. There’s a really wicked sound that comes out of Derek when the guy touches Stiles. It even makes the hair on the back of Stiles’s neck stand up straight.

“Put the chipmunk down Eddie,” the witch demands, “unless you want to be wolf bait.”

The guy shrugs, sets Stiles down and backs away. Derek is there immediately, his belly right over Stiles’s head, yep, just right there. Apparently protecting him. A wolfy shield. It’s probably got nothing on Captain America’s shield, but it’s a lot softer. And maybe actually it is more badass. Stiles can’t exactly pick him up and throw him or anything, but he’s giving off some pretty strong vibes right now that he’d rip this entire magic gaggle apart one by one if Stiles told him to. 

“Down boy,” Stiles tells him, hopping over to one of his feet and climbing his leg. Perched on his shoulder blades, he sits back and tells the witch lady, “I won’t sic my wolf on you if you turn me back.”

“Sorry kid,” she smirks, folding her arms nice and neat over her chest, “no take backs on magic.”

“What?! This is permanent?! That is such fucking bullshit!” it’s accompanied by a low threatening growl from Derek.

“Magic must run it’s course,” she shrugs, looking down to examine her nails.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is this boring to you?”

“Yes actually. It is.”

At that, Derek lunges, knocking Stiles off his back but taking the witch down to hers. His teeth bared, probably breathing dog breath all over her face. She cackles. Not with the cackling thing again. 

“Must be a Hale,” something glimmers at her fingertips, and before Stiles can warn Derek, it pops. Sending a flash of bright light and noise, a lot like a flash-bang, through the woods around them. 

************

By the time Derek can get his wits about him, the ringing in his ears starting to subside and his vision evening out, they’re gone.

“Stiles,” his voice comes out breathy, “Stiles!” 

“Over here dude,” he’s sitting on a tree branch, eating an acorn.

“Glad to see that affected you too.”

“Oh yeah, man, for like a whole minute there I was coughing and sneezing. That was intense,” one cheek is already loaded, “you though, that was like an hour. At least.”

“So like five minutes?”

“Probably,” he shrugs, “so what now? We chase ‘em down? Eat ‘em for dinner?”

Derek sighs, pulls himself to seated and rubs his hand across his face, leaning his head into his palms, “no. We let them go.”

“What?!” his squawk of indignation is ear-piercing and he launches himself off the branch to run up Derek’s arm.

Derek adjusts his stance, letting Stiles sit in his palm, keeping him eye level, “she said it can’t be reversed. It has to run it’s course.”

“Yeah but…”

“You said it yourself, not all problems can be solved by sheer force.”

“I totally didn’t say that.”

“You did actually. When you were talking about research.”

“Oh,” his head tilts, eyes scanning over Derek slowly, “so what then? I’m just a chipmunk until it wears off? How long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gee thanks for the help Big Guy,” he rolls his eyes and Derek tries not to laugh at how ridiculously cute that is on his furry little face.

“What?! You want me to unleash my mad face?!”

“No,” Derek chuckles. It turns quickly into a belly laugh when Stiles does unleash his mad face. 

**************

Holy Hale! Stiles just made Derek laugh! Laugh! Like a real, belly-rumbling, body-shaking laugh! And he’s still doing it! 

This is the best thing ever!

Okay, so maybe not ever. Because there’s a lot of things in ever. But maybe this is the best Hale thing ever. 

Stiles can’t help but grin at the sight of it. The way his eyes twinkle and the skin around them crinkles, the way his entire face just opens right up when he’s happy. And looks so soft. It’s incredible. He wonders when the last time Derek laughed like that was.

It’s just so warm and fuzzy. Stiles puts a paw down on the pad of Derek’s thumb when he stops laughing, which jolts a, “sorry,” out of Derek as he gets to his feet.

“Wait, what? Don’t apologize. You only have to apologize if you’re laughing at. And we were laughing together, dude, so…”

“We’ll figure it out,” he sighs, bringing his hand up to his shoulder for Stiles to jump onto his perch, “the spell thing. We’ll figure it out and get you back home soon enough.”

“Oh. Yeah. That. Okay, that’s fine. You know, we should probably send my dad another text.”

“Yep,” he sighs, tilts his head back to look at the darkening sky and shifts back into full wolf to run home. 

“Dude, a collar, seriously,” Stiles hollers over the sound of the wind rushing in his ears as he grips down tight on Derek’s fur.


	5. Chipmunky Urges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It just keeps getting more and more ridiculous :)

Chipmunky Urges

Derek wakes when he feels Stiles hop off the bed. Blinking on eye half open to watch him scamper up the bookcase, dart around on each shelf like he’s looking for something.

“Stiles,” he huffs against the pillow. It’s way too early for this.

“Oh don’t mind me sleepywolf, I’m just looking for something to do.”

“Try sleeping.”

“I did. I did try. It didn’t work.”

“Okay,” Derek pulls himself over to the far side of the bed, the side that the shirt Stiles made a nest out of is sitting on top of his spare pillow, and reaches for a book off the shelf, “this one,” propping it against the headboard, opening it to the first page, “you can turn the pages yourself.”

“Oh,” he leaps off the bookcase, does a half twisting backflip and fails, landing belly up on the bed.

Derek chuckles, turning his back and settling in on his side, facing away from Stiles.

“Thanks,” he hears Stiles mumble, feels him scurry up the bed to sit with the book. 

Derek tries to separate himself from the sound of the pages flipping, the feel of not being alone in bed, and the soft mumblings that are exiting Stiles’s mouth unconsciously. Something this easy, and this intimate, is not something he deserves. He reminds himself of that and forces himself not to listen to Stiles’s heartbeat. Not to listen to every breath he takes. And not to revel in it. 

——————

The next time Derek wakes, the late morning sun is filtering through his windows and his body has rolled in the night to face Stiles’s side of the bed. The spare side of the bed, he reminds himself. Where Stiles is half sitting, half laying against the balled up shirt at his back, his feet dream twitching, head lolled to the side, mouth half open. 

He sneaks out without waking him, trudges to the shower and listens in on the conversation going on downstairs between Isaac and Scott. It’s mostly about video games. 

It isn’t until Erica comes banging into the loft, with Boyd behind her that Derek heads downstairs after checking on a still sleeping Stiles. 

**************

Stiles scurries over to the railing after he does his morning bathroom business and hustles back out to see what’s going on without him. He stops at the corner where the stairs begin, shakes his tail and does a sneak attack leap down towards Derek. Derek who is standing by the kitchen with one arm across his broad chest, the other tucked against it and his hand propping his chin while he listens to what Lydia has to say. 

Stiles throws his arms out last minute to shift this from a dive into a swan dive, grasps the ends of Derek’s hair and slides right down out of it, “oh shit,” losing the hair rope because he is not Rapunzel after all, missing the opportunity to dig his paws into the collar of his shirt, scrabbling for purchase on his worn out t-shirt and then saved by a big warm calloused hand cupping under him, “Stiles,” so very put-upon, lifting him to his shoulder.

“What’d I miss?” 

The whole pack looks at him like he just spoke a foreign language. Which, okay, fine he kind of is. And they’re kind of predators and he’s kind of prey, so there’s probably something inside their DNA telling them to attack, maim, kill, eat, but he’s sitting on the shoulder of their alpha so that instinct is quenched, dead in the water, stopped in it’s tracks. Or do they even have that instinct anyway?

“No one has any instincts to eat you Stiles,” Derek reassures him.

“That was not out loud Derek,” he huffs, crossing his arms in a mock of Derek’s stance.

Scott laughs when Stiles catches his eye, but clears his throat as soon as Derek’s eyes land on him, “totally, yep, no one is going to eat Stiles,” big round eyes glancing over to Allison who nods her agreement.

Then she wonders, “are the witches after something? Why are they here?”

“Most likely passing through,” Derek shrugs and Stiles has to drop to all fours and grab onto his shirt to not fall off.

“Why’d they mess with Stiles then?” Scott wants to know.

“He probably messed with them first,” Derek responds. 

“Ohmigod dude, I totally did not! I did not even say a word to them, I didn’t encroach on their territory or campsite or interrupt their dancing under the moon around the bubbling cauldron thingy at all. I was just minding my own business and, you know the story! I told you the story!”

“What’d he say?” Scotty interrupts.

“Nothing important,” Derek responds.

Stiles huffs out an indignant squawk, leaps off his shoulder and heads towards the cereal. Scampering past Lydia, she lifts her high-healed boot and nearly squashes him, “don’t you dare come near me rodent.”

“That’s not a rodent,’ Scotty lines her out, “that’s Stiles.”

“In a rodent’s body Scott. Therefore, a rodent,” she sounds bored now.

“And still Stiles,” Scott argues.

Meanwhile, Derek is pouring cereal into a bowl and setting it on the table for Stiles to jump into. Well, probably for him to sit beside and eat quietly, but jumping into it and running around inside the bowl as it splashes cereal out onto the table is so much more fun. He doesn’t stop until Derek’s index finger taps down on his rump, “knock it off.”

“Fun sponge,” Stiles accuses, then skitters around the table shoving the spilled cereal into his cheeks. 

It’s Erica who’s godawful throat slicing nails slide down Stiles’s back, “why is it so fitting for Stiles to be a chipmunk?”

He opens his mouth to protest, but turns out, it’s too full of cereal. And that nail scratching business feels kind of good, actually. He shrugs, going back at the cereal with reckless abandon.

“Alright, Isaac, stay with Stiles, don’t let him have any junk food or caffeine,” Derek sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Where are you going?” Isaac wonders around his pretentious scarf.

“Just something I need to do,” Derek shrugs, grabs his keys, doesn’t bother giving anyone else any orders, and leaves.

“But dude!” Stiles tries over a mouthful of cereal, “you’re the only one who speaks Chipmunk!”

“Why do you think it’s Derek that can understand him? And Derek only?” Scott wonders, the broful hurt all over his voice. They’re bros for life, if anyone should be able to understand him, it’s Scott.

“Maybe the born wolf thing,” Boyd supplies.

“You think Derek speaks all critter languages?”

“No Scott, that’s stupid,” Lydia rolls her eyes, “can I leave now? I have some much more important things to do. Like file my nails,” she swoops her hand over her shoulder to push her hair back, slides her purse up her arm and darts a glance at Allison, then towards the door.

“Oh yeah, me too,” Allison hustles behind her. And they’re gone, with little waves over their shoulders, leaving behind a trail of hair product and badassery. 

“Isn’t that girl code for all the girls must leave before the video games start?” Issac shoots a look at Erica, who shrugs, and plops down on the couch. 

“I’m not one of the girls,” she’s taking up pretty much the entire couch. And Stiles is certain no one is going to argue it.

———————

So just because no one can understand him, doesn’t mean he’s going to be quiet. And the game cube that Isaac brought with him when he moved in with Derek, is providing hours of entertainment, Stiles can bounce on the controller whenever he wants to sabotage someone’s game, namely Isaac’s because, like he said earlier, he and Scott are bros for life. 

“So what’s it like sleeping in Derek’s bed?” Erica drawls after awhile, poking Stiles in the rump with her claw, “does he even sleep or does he just do pull-ups all night long? Guy’s probably got some stamina.”

Stiles mouth hangs open for a minute, staring at her evil, evil smile. 

“Derek totally doesn’t sleep at night, he just works out and eats protein shakes,” Scott tells her matter-of-factly.

“Drinks them, Scotty, you drink protein shakes,” Stiles corrects him with a flail of his hands that gets Isaac’s scarf caught in his nail and wow, that is soft. Pretentious in California summertime, or really, anytime, but soft, “and I’ll have you know he does sleep actually. He’s very cute when he sleeps. And he rumbles. It’s not a snore. It’s not a purr, but if he was a tiny kitten it would be.”

Suddenly Scott gets very serious, and puts his very serious face right in Stiles’s face, “is he being nice to you? Blink once for yes and twice for no.”

“Or I could just nod my head, like this,” Stiles nods.

“Or is he torturing you for some ind of information? Is he planning on biting you and turning you against your will?”

Erica launches a pillow at Scott’s head, “Derek’s never turned anyone against their will, he’s very persuasive with all that sex appeal.”

“And the super-healing doesn’t hurt,” Isaac adds, then flushes a little and curls in on himself where he’s leaning against the couch, cross-legged on the floor. 

Erica’s scary claws reach out, scratching his skull, he instantly relaxes into it. Interesting. So doggie head scratching sessions work on wolves too? 

———————

It’s only like noon when they break out the junk food and Mountain Dew and seriously? It doesn’t matter how many wolves are in the room and could swallow Stiles in one gulp, nothing is going to stop him from getting his hands on some Cheetos and yummy delicious horrible for you sugared up caffeinated beverage. 

He’s literally bouncing off the walls when Derek walks in. His brows immediately pull into very unimpressed scowling mode and all the wolves disperse with muttered apologies and excuses.

“Derek, Derek, Derek! Derek!” Stiles launches himself off the couch, loses his footing on the floor and smashes face first into Derek’s boot, “why is it that you can understand me and no one else can? Why do you always wear your angry face when your relaxed smiling face is so much prettier? Why are you always so gruff and mean? When you’re not really mean at all. Why leather? In California in the summer? Is it a requirement to be a part of your pack? Who started that rule? Did you talk to my dad? Can I talk to my dad? You can be my interpreter and he’ll only think you’re mostly crazy and put you on a 72 hour psych hold, but then you’ll have access to all the good drugs. I wanna talk to my dad!” by now he’s done about seven laps of the loft’s living room area, “you need another couch. And some chairs. And some rugs. And some end tables with lamps on them. And things that make this place more appealing. And you need to let people in more often. You’re not a bad guy, you’re just closed off and you have every right to be, but you have a pack and a pack needs a strong alpha and not just in the physical sense but also in the emotional sense, but like I’m one to talk, huh? Huh? I deflect, Derek! With humor and sarcasm and it works! But I’m not the alpha! Derek! Derek! Why did your parents choose Derek? Is it a family name? Was it your mom’s favorite, or your dad's? Are you…”

Stiles is suddenly being picked up, plopped on Derek’s shoulder and they’re leaving the loft. His motor mouth doesn’t stop motoring and he’s scampering all over inside the Camaro. The Camaro that doesn’t stop until they’re at the Hale house. 

“Why? Why Derek? Why here? Why here?” as soon as the car is in park, Stiles launches himself out the open window and takes off. Rummaging around in the dead leaves and the fresh air. Skittering up trees and leaping branches. He can fly! He can totally fly! Sort of. He’s getting better at it anyway. And this time when he falls, he lands on a black wolf instead of the hard packed ground. A black wolf who has been running along under the trees that Stiles is jumping through. 

“Thanks buddy,” Stiles watches his paws pat the top of Derek’s head, his heart is near bursting but at least now it feels more like just from running, not from too much caffeine, “I only had one sip Derek. I swear. And it was no one’s fault but my own. I snuck it,” he tugs his ear back to speak directly into it. Derek humors him for a split second before he shakes his head violently, dislodging Stiles and sending him careening off into a pile of brush. Where he decides is a great place to burrow.

Burrow he does, “I’m giving into my chipmunky urges,” he shouts over his shoulder, “what happens when it’s mating season,” super deep inhale, “Derek! What happens when it’s mating season and I still have chipmunky urges?”

“Nothing happens Stiles,” his voice is very calm and very reassuring, and he’s grabbing Stiles by the tail and dragging him back out of the burrow, “you won’t still be a chipmunk by the time the second mating season occurs.”

“There are two?”

“For chipmunks, yes. They have Spring babies and late Summer babies.”

“Oh,” Stiles is set gently on Derek’s man shoulder, “you’re a man again.”

“You were freaking out.”

“Since like, all day dude.”

“Noticed.”

“So are you just going to walk in the nude back to the old nightmarish horror house that still stinks of your dead family? Does it still stink of your dead family?”

“You shouldn’t even have Mountain Dew when you’re you. Much less when your organs are so tiny and can't process garbage like that.”

“Noted. Do you ever do anything that’s bad for you? Besides dating viscous women and having supernatural grudge matches?”

Derek shrugs and Stiles slips on his flesh, landing on his belly, draped over Derek’s meaty shoulder.

“Sorry. I’m an asshole.”

“I know.”

“I’m just frustrated.”

“Yep. Ready?”

“For wh…” and he’s a wolf, ladies and gentlemen. Stiles grips on tight to his ruff and Derek takes off at full sprint. Damn it, he never should have said that. That was a low blow. Like a bunch of low blows. He just, sometimes can’t bite his tongue and lashes out at the wrong targets. It’s not Derek’s fault that he’s stuck as a chipmunk, is it? Nope. And it’s not his fault he’s the only one that can understand Stiles. 

He doesn’t stop running until dusk is falling around them, leaving the woods in a grey din of colors and crickets trilling over the sound of Derek’s footfalls on the forest floor. He stops at the steps of the old burned out structure that makes Stiles’s stomach clench, he sits down and just eyes the place for a moment, leaning his head back and howling a low mournful howl. 

Stiles watches his claws gripping tight to Derek’s ruff, he could let go, let the man have his moment alone. But there’s something that feels really important about hanging on right now. Letting the guy know he’s not alone. 

He doesn’t say anything, for like a record amount of time, while Derek sits there staring at the front door. And he doesn’t let go either. Not until Derek shrugs his shoulders in that telltale, I’m-about-to-shift way that Stiles is very slowly starting to recognize. So he hops off, sits on the bottom step and watches. But doesn’t look, he totally doesn’t look at all the ridiculous nudity right there in the dimming daylight, right in front of him. He absolutely doesn’t look. Not until he’s got his boxer-briefs on anyway. 

(Maybe he looked a little. And damn.)

Stiles sits back on his back feet, brings his front paws to his chin and taps his fingers together, “what now?”

Derek tugs his t-shirt on, which is a shame, “dinner. And bed.”

“But…”

“No. Stiles, just, we’ll figure this out, okay?” stepping into his pants, which is also a shame.

When he lifts Stiles up and sets him on his shoulder again, he wonders quietly, “where were you all day?”

“Talking to someone.”

“Someone, like Deaton? Or someone like my dad? Or someone like a date? Because that leaves a whole lot of options Derek. Some I like better than others if I’m being honest.”

“My mom’s old friend,” he offers quietly, pulling open the door of the Camaro, lowering himself into his seat.

“Oh. Sometimes I forget, you know, not that I had a mom. Just that sometimes I kind of forget about her and all the things that make me think of her, ‘cause sometimes it’s just easier to forget. I guess. But I miss mine too.”

There’s a half nod as he reaches up to take a hold of Stiles and set him on the passenger seat. Laying a handful of granola out in front of him. And he’s pretty sure that means he’s a special guy in Derek’s world if he’s allowing him to eat a snack in the front seat of his spotlessly clean car. 

************

Satomi said she had never heard of anyone shifting into a chipmunk, but it wasn’t impossible either. Spells cast to turn someone into an animal would wear off, usually within twenty-four or forty-eight hours. But spells to reveal one’s true form would last for life when done correctly. 

A chipmunk shift. That sounds about right for Stiles. Derek just needs to figure out if that’s the truth of the matter, and then how exactly to tell Stiles. 

He didn’t bother waking him when he carried him from the car to the loft, didn’t make him eat dinner. But when he wakes up to the sound of skittering around at three in the morning, he’s wishing he had.

“Stiles,” he sighs when he rolls to face the noise, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light coming off the flashlight that Stiles has propped on the floor while he moves chess pieces around on the board, “how did you even get that all down? No,” rubbing his fingers into his eyes, “I don’t want to know. Just, what are you doing?”

“I’m figuring out how to tell my dad.”

“Tell your dad through chess?”

“Yep. A language he can understand.”

“Try English?”

“I’m a chipmunk.”

“I can translate for you.”

“Right now? Can we go right now?”

“No,” Derek flops back on his back, watching the shadows playing games on the ceiling, “he’s less likely to shoot Scott. So we bring Scott.”

“Oh. Righty-o,” the sound of his tiny claws scraping against the floor, and the feel of his body being tugged up to the bed by his grip on the comforter, then he’s suddenly there. In Derek’s face, sitting on his chest, “why are you being so nice to me?”

“Am I normally mean?”

“No,” his paw lands tentatively on Derek’s chin, “you’re just grr and roar and ripping throats out with teeth and stuff. But now you’re being weirdly zen about this whole thing.”

“Would you prefer I rip your throat out? It’d be quite easy.”

“No. I’m good, here, with my throat intact,” he pauses for long enough that Derek tilts his head to give him full eye contact, which seems to startle the next question right out of him, “is there a reason you can understand me and no one else can?”

“Probably just the born wolf thing.”

“Yeah, well then Peter would understand me too. So…”

“I,” his hand rises, rubs the length of his face until it contacts Stiles’s paw on his chin, “I don’t know,” he lies and hopes chipmunks can’t detect lies the way a wolf can. 

“Okay. Well that makes two of us,” he draws back, but not far, curling up in a ball on Derek’s chest, right over his heart, “can I sleep here?”

Derek remembers how mixed his emotions where when he achieved full-shift, so he gets it, “yeah,” he sighs, laying his hand alongside Stiles’s back, anchoring him there so he doesn’t slide off, end up in Derek’s armpit and get rolled over and crushed to death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notice: This has become a series... I'm having too much fun. And I also want Chipmunk Stiles Stilinski to be a tag used on multiple works, so if any of you feel like writing or drawing a chipmunk Stiles piece, please do, just put this work in the inspired by portion before you post. I have this work, and then a few one-shots to add on at the end. (A few that could turn into a long term commitment to chipmunk Stiles depending on how much more fluffy ridiculousness I can write) I'll continue to post on Sundays :) Thanks friends!


	6. Werechipmunks, Too?

Werechipmunks, Too?

“I’ve known you your whole life Scott, but this is,” Dad’s words trail off, he leans forward again, propping his elbows on the table to rub at his forehead for a moment, look of anguish on his face. 

“You know you want to believe him Dad,” Stiles urges from his post on Derek’s shoulder, “so just do it. It makes so much sense, right? When you get past all the supernatural stuff that doesn’t really make any sense at all unless we were in a movie or a teen fiction or something, but it makes sense! Come on Dad!” he flails his hands out to the side, accidentally smacks Derek on the side of the face.

Dad’s looking at him when he does it and it’s almost like a flicker of recognition but not quite. Stiles opens his mouth again, but Derek is setting him gently on the table instead, lifting the hem of his shirt.

“Um, this is,” Dad starts when Derek removes his pants, “I don’t…”

“Just let him show you,” Scotty pleads with his best puppy face that was a puppy face long before he was bitten, “and please don’t shoot him.”

Stiles hops back over to his shoulder, “maybe if I’m standing here, he’ll be less likely to shoot you.”

“He’s not going to shoot me,” Derek grumbles, to which Dad’s eyebrows shoot up and before he can respond, Derek is a wolf. Standing on all fours in the middle of the kitchen. And wow, does he look big when he’s pinched in such a tiny spot. 

Dad shoves his chair back from the table with a start, puts his arm out towards Scott, “come over here son,” his sheriff voice very calm.

“It’s just Derek,” Scott assures him.

His hand drops to his side holster, alarm bells going off in his head. Derek sits back, keeping plenty of distance and an entire table between him and Dad.

“Just watch, please,” Scott’s puppy face is back on full force. Then he shifts. 

And Dad freezes. His hand is on his gun, but he hasn’t taken it out of the holster yet, so that’s a plus.

“Runnin’ out of time here Scotty,” Stiles urges. 

“Just like I told you, sir,” Scott lisps at him through his wolf teeth. Putting his hands up in the air between them, maybe to show his claws or maybe to show he’s not going to attack.

Dad’s eyes are wide, and his mouth is slightly open.

“Catching flies Dad?” Stiles wonders.

Derek is suddenly a man again. Stiles grips his ear to hang on to his sweat dampened skin. Oh, Big Guy must be nervous if he’s sweating right now! 

Dad blinks. Once, twice, three times. Scott shifts back. And Dad plops down in the chair, “I need a drink,” he mourns against his hands that come up to rest his head in.

“But it makes a lot of things make a lot of sense, doesn’t it?” Stiles asks, “well, not the whole chipmunk thing, though, that’s still kind of…”

“Is your chipmunk friend saying anything important, son?” he aims at Derek.

Who shrugs, and mutters, “it’s Stiles.”

“So no then,” crossing his arms, leaning back, appraising Stiles on his perch as Derek bends to retrieve his underwear. Stiles hops off, slides on the table and crashes into the salt shaker.

“Are you watching your salt?” he motions towards the shaker, shoving it off the table when he realizes it’s not even sea salt, just regular old iodized salt, “I’ve been gone for two days and you’re already eating fast food aren’t you?! Fess up Dad!”

“Am I really getting a lecture from a chipmunk right now?”

“Yep,” Derek’s belt buckle jingling does something to Stiles’s head that he’s not willing to admit to, but he jerks his attention over to the man, gesturing wildly for him to translate, “I’m not lecturing your dad about salt.”

“You’re a terrible, terrible, translator Derek!” 

“Yeah, I am,” he admits, pulling a chair out and sitting down. Which makes Stiles’s stomach flip, seeing him sitting at the dinner table at his house. It looks somehow natural, like he’s supposed to be there. 

Dad is rubbing his hands over his face now, then motioning for Scott to take a seat as well, “so let me get this straight. Stiles interrupted a witch’s gathering, got turned into a chipmunk, and you’re the only one who can understand what he’s saying?”

“That’s the gist of it,” Derek’s hand is resting on the table, it’s distracting watching his fingers fiddle with the placemat there, the one Mom sewed.

“How do we turn him back then? Should I be sending out a party to track these witches?”

“No, I tracked them already. It was a dead end. I’ve been told that spells to turn a human into an animal will wear off eventually.”

“So we just wait?” Dad’s eyes land on Stiles, studying him harder than he has since they came bursting in here with stories to regale.

“Yeah. Or, it’s possible that this is a long term thing.”

“What?” Scott, Dad, and Stiles all wonder at the same time.

“If it were some kind of true shift, it would be something he’d have to learn how to control.”

“What are you saying? That there are werechipmunks too?” Scott looks shocked.

And Stiles feels a little sick to his stomach if he’s being honest, “a chipmunk shift Derek?! What in the Hale kind of sense does that even make? I’ve never been bitten by a chipmunk! And why now all of a sudden would it just show up? Was my mom some kind of werechipmunk too? What the Hale?”

“It’s not like a werewolf. It’s hard to explain,” he runs a hand through his hair, “the spell would have started the shift. It’s like the equivalent of being bit by a wolf, but it’s not a wolf doing the biting so you don’t turn into a wolf, it just achieves a shift that is true to your personality.”

“A chipmunk!” Stiles squeaks, “you’re saying I resemble a chipmunk?! You’re saying of all the cool things in the entire universe that I could have shifted into, I somehow subconsciously chose a chipmunk?!”

“Sort of,” his eyes are on Stiles’s face while he repeats what he just said for Scott and Dad’s benefit.

“That doesn’t even make any sense Derek! Why would anyone, ever, in the whole history of ever, choose a chipmunk shift?! What purpose could it possibly serve? How in the world could I possibly help in this tiny, fragile body in a fight?”

“You weren’t meant for fighting, Stiles,” Derek’s glare effectively levels him, but makes a rush of tingles rise from his toes to the top of his head and an involuntary squeak part his lips, “you were made for thinking. Challenging ideas and methods. You were made for analyzing a situation and bravely charging ahead anyway. But in a small, sleek, and graceful body, you could charge in undetected. You could be an asset without comparison, slip under the radar to gather information. See things that no one else gets to see, enter an enemy den at will, and sneak back out undetected.”

“Until I steal all their bird food.”

Derek actually smiles, just a little, before he wipes it off his face like it never existed, and also backtracks on pretty much everything he just said, by adding, “chipmunks are an important part of the ecosystem.”

“Uh, yeah, thanks for that amendment Derek,” Stiles sighs, tips over on his side and moans, “of course I was doomed to be a tiny, chatty, hyper rodent.”

Derek chuckles, “chipmunks are pretty clever too.”

“Good at evading predators,” Dad chimes in, then shoves out from the table, “okay, I seriously need a drink. Derek?”

“No, thank you sir. Alcohol doesn’t affect me.”

“Glass of water then. For both of you. And Stiles? Would you like a peanut?” he shakes his head to himself like he can’t believe he’s talking to a chipmunk.

“Bullshit Dad! You were just talking to me the other day like I was some long lost friend you share secrets with, when no one was looking, but now that there’s people around you get all shy on me?!”

Derek chuckles again, “I’m not telling him that either.”

Dad stiffens suddenly, “was that you the other day?” dropping his gaze to Stiles.

Stiles nods, throws his hand out in the air in some kind of gesture that clearly displays his secret chippy feeding days are over!

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

Stiles laughs, long and hard. And apparently it’s a pretty funny sound because it isn’t long until everyone has their own display of amusement.

———————

Dad decides they are staying for dinner. All three of them. Dinner is a frozen lasagne, but it’s better than fast food. Stiles even gets a place at the table. On the table. Whatever.

Then Derek and Dad talk for a very long time about Were-culture. It’s kind of weird, and kind of interesting. And why the Hale can’t Derek just tell the pack all this stuff? Why does he need a guy with a badge to interrogate him out of this information?

Oh, probably because of Kate Argent. That’s why. 

They don’t leave until Dad is getting ready to head in for his shift. Then they linger at the door for a moment, Dad not knowing what to say or how to bid his son goodnight, so Stiles just leaps over from Derek’s shoulder to his dad’s and wraps his arms around his neck. Sort of. As far as they’ll go anyway. Dad strokes a single finger down his spine, “you’re lucky this isn’t during the school year,” he mumbles, “and I suppose you’ll be staying with Derek until you figure out how to shift back?” turning his attention to Derek with the glare of a thousand angry Papas, “you’ll take care of him?”

“Yes sir,” and suddenly this is like the worst nightmare prom night.

“Dad, it’s not like freaky wolf on chippy business would ever happen. Plus, Derek is so out of my league even if I was human, it’d never happen.”

Stiles startles when Derek clears his throat. And oh. Oh yeah, Derek is the one that can understand him. Note to self: don’t talk about Derek out loud! Ever!

“His pillow,” Dad remembers suddenly, turning towards the stairs to make quick work of them, “you can’t sleep without your pillow.”

“Yeah, mostly true. Except apparently chipmunk me can sleep just about anywhere and Derek’s shirts make great beds.”

“This is so strange, your mom would be having a field day with this,” he admits, turning his head to look at Stiles perched on his shoulder, paws holding onto his collar, “she’d laugh until she couldn’t possibly laugh any longer. Then she’d probably find those witches and force them to change you back.”

“I’ll figure it out Dad. I’ll be back to myself, clumsy, annoying, takes up too much space me in no time,” and since Dad can’t understand him, he nudges his face against his jaw.

“I’ll check in tomorrow,” he starts back down the stairs, Stiles’s pillow tucked under his arm, “and son? Don’t lie to me about camping. Don’t lie to me about anything. Ever again.”

“That might have been the worst part of all of this,” Stiles agrees, “well, aside from the bloody murder and supernatural violence and stuff.”

Dad gives the pillow over to Derek, slides a finger down Stiles’s spine again and sighs heavily, “take care of him,” reminding Derek once more.

“Dad! I’m not a damsel in distress! You don’t need to have any kind of shovel and .44 talk over my purity. I can’t even give my V card away, even in my human form! And it’d just be fucked up to do it in my chipmunk form, right? Like that poor chippy would never know what hit her.”

“Okay,” Derek interrupts, like anyone else can even understand him, “we don’t want to make your dad late for his shift,” he heads out the door into the nighttime air, followed closely by Scotty. So Stiles pats his dad’s shoulder once more, then hops from him to Scott, to Derek.

“Good night Dad!”

“Good night Mr. Stilinski.”

“Good night Sheriff.”

“Night boys.”

“Good night John-boy, good night Elizabeth, good night Daddy, good night son, good…”

“And you can shut up now,” Derek informs him when he pulls the passenger side door open, tucks Stiles’s pillow nice and neatly into the seat, and plops him down on it.

“Doing that. Doing exactly that. Now where’s my granola?!”

**************

Stiles is jumping around in the center of his pillow, all four paws hitting it dozens of times in the same spot before he sits back and studies it. He licks his fingers, scrubs them across his face and head, then goes back in for more pouncing.

“You’re going to have to shower at some point,” Derek reminds him.

“Okay nature boy! Mr I take showers in the rain! You’re only saying that because you want me to wash down the drain. Or better yet, let’s fill up the kitchen sink for bath time, oops there goes Stiles down the garbage disposal.”

“If I wanted to kill you, I would…”

“Rip my throat out with your teeth, grrr,” he jolts both front paws down into the pillow then looks around like he’s guilty of something, before he settles in with a yawn, “well that went okay back there. With my dad.”

“Not bad,” Derek agrees, folding his arm under his own pillow and nestling into it.

“Probably not a bad thing for either of you to be allies, right?”

“Right.”

“Have the law on your side. And the law has you to sniff down clues,” it looks like he’s trying to wiggle his eyebrows while a shit-eating grin spreads.

Derek snorts, “subtle.”

“I’m the king of subtlety. Which is maybe why you were right. Earlier. About the whole sleek and graceful body thing. So,” he’s cut off by a big yawn, resting his chin on his front paws, “let’s talk about that tomorrow. And find me an anchor.”

——————

Derek wakes, not bothering to open his eyes, when he feels Stiles’s paws tentatively land on his chest. Careful not to move in any way, making sure Stiles still thinks he’s sound asleep, he waits to see what he’s doing. 

Careful and slow in ways that Derek didn’t think Stiles capable, he climbs up to center himself over Derek’s heart, curls into a ball, and falls back to sleep.


	7. Chipmunk Ninja Skills

Chipmunk Ninja Skills

Derek has mostly gotten used to waking with Stiles curled on his heart. By the end of the first week, he expects it. He wasn’t supposed to, knowing it wouldn’t last. The good things never do.

But he waits anyway, lays still and silent until Stiles moves. He’s been getting more and more agitated as the days have dragged on. Derek has been trying to keep it normal for him, making sure everyone treats him like he’s still Stiles because he is still Stiles. Taking him to see his dad every day, and bringing him to the Preserve to get some fresh air and burn some energy. 

When he wakes on the eighth day, Stiles is sitting up, staring at him, “I wanna go home.”

“Okay, I’m not holding you hostage, you can…”

“I want you to come with me.”

Derek opens his mouth, reminding himself that he can’t want Stiles, he can’t need Stiles and he can’t let Stiles need him.

“Please,” he sits back on his haunches, his tail twitching against Derek’s chest, “it’s just the whole anchor thing. I just, I think being at my own house for a whole day, sleeping in my own bed. The longer I’m in here, the crazier I feel, and the further away it all seems. I just want to spend the day with my dad, watch some ball games and nag him about his diet. I want to sit at my computer and stare into the abyss that is social media so I know what I’m missing, all the parties I’ll never be invited to and all the glamorous stuff everyone is doing that I…”

“You do know that people only post the cool shit to social media to make their lives look the way they want them to look, right? And it’s all…”

“I know, I know, living life through a filter and photoshop and probably if you’re posting everything you do it’s only for validation anyway and you live a really lonely popularity driven life, but sometimes I just want to get down on myself and use social media to do it, okay?”

“You don’t need to…”

“Use social media to feel bad, I’m enough of a loser misfit without having it shoved in my face. But that’s high school Derek, you remember high…” his voice trails off, round dark eyes blinking, “I wouldn’t want to remember high school if I were you. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“Didn’t mean anything by it,” Derek reaches out and tips his chin back up so he’s looking at him again, “it’s fine. Sometimes forgetting is easier, right?”

He half-smiles, tapping his fingers together, “yeah. So maybe if I need an anchor, then I need to be home. And stop making myself forget, you know?”

“Yeah,” Derek tucks his hand behind his head when he releases Stiles’s chin.

“Okay Big Guy,” he pats his little fingers down on Derek’s chin, “eat some breakfast and get dressed, and let's go spend my dad’s day off with him,” with that he skitters off the bed and hustles out the door. 

************

“It’s not working, nothing is working, I feel like I’m either on the verge of panic, or I’m going through withdrawals from a drug I’m not addicted to,” Stiles scampers back out of the box of his mom’s things. Looking at his dad where he’s sitting on the edge of their bed, watching him like he can understand him. 

Even if he can’t, “well son, I don’t think it’s working,” he drags his hands over his pants, and groans when he stands.

“You’re getting so old, you’re doing the dad groan every time you stand now? You need to take better care of your joints. Maybe some glucosamine supplements. Did you ever get your new pair of work boots for the year? You were due for a pair last month, remember?”

Dad reaches out, offering his palm for Stiles to jump into. He sniffs at his wrist when he lands in the center of it, “you miss her? I miss her. But I try not to, you know, because we need to be strong for each other, and you’re doing the best you can and I’m doing the best I can.”

Dad nods, reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a peanut, handing it to Stiles with a sigh, “try not to get too frustrated son. You’ll find a way. You always do,” he’s got his proud dad smile on, patting Stiles’s head, “in the meantime lets be couch-potatoes. Maybe I’ll let you sneak some junk food while Derek’s not watching.”

———————

Even on Derek’s day off from alphaing, he still can’t just not run the Preserve in his full wolf form. So he’s gone on a run. And probably home to take a shower and clean up before dinner. But he’s been gone for so long! So long, Stiles scampers back over to the window, running the length of the sill, craning his neck this way and that, scanning the road for his Camaro. But it’s still not there. 

And he thought of something he wants to tell his dad! But Dad can’t understand him! He keeps offering him more nuts and berries. And he’s so full, he bound to turn into a ball and just roll right across the floor. There’s no more room in his cheeks even. (What? It’s not like he’s going to turn the food down. He’s a hoarder by nature, right? His chipmunky nature anyway.)

Oh no. The more he’s like this, the more he wants to give in. Does Derek feel like this ever? Has Derek ever spent a full day or a full week in his wolf body? What if he did? What would happen if he did? Would he join a new pack and leave them all behind, embrace his true form and never come back to Beacon Hills?

Stiles doesn’t want a new pack. Even if some of them are starting to treat him differently now. Like he’s actually a chipmunk. Which, really, he could have some fun with this. Once he learns how to control it, anyway. But for now, being stuck in a body and being stuck with a language that no one understands, he’s not really willing to just put himself out there to get stomped on or his head cut off with a claw or pierced through the heart with a tiny chipmunk arrow! Not that Allison would actually kill a chipmunk with an arrow. Would she? No. No? No.

Stiles taps his fingers together under his chin. Hops off the windowsill and hustles across the floor to his dad’s chair, pulling himself up by his pant leg to sit on his knee and watch the game.

It’s not long before another peanut is sitting in front of him. 

************

John Stilinski has seen some strange things in his life. And he’s heard some strange things. Things he’s always just chocked up to so-and-so having too many drinks to be a reliable witness, or a bad batch of moonshine, and there was even that meth lab they found a few months back. But this, this is something. And this something explains all the somethings he’s filed away as hallucinations. It puts a whole new spin on a lot of open case files that even if he can’t officially close through the usual channels without risking his mental health coming into question, he can stop feeling guilty about unsolved cases stacking up. Knowing this supernatural world that exists inside his own world, and being able to believe every word of it, it’s going to give him quite an advantage in law enforcement now. 

He sighs when Stiles hops off his knee again, charging over to the window and skittering around the sill. Sure, it’s strange that Derek can understand him and no one else can, but no more strange than anything else about any of this. 

He’s not exactly wild about his son hanging out with a young man five years his elder, but he supposes with the background Derek Hale has, he’s probably well deserving of a friendship, any friendship, even if it’s with high school kids. And maybe he’s not such a bad influence as most college age kids would be, he’s certainly not buying them alcohol or letting them party at his place. He’s just leading them into supernatural battles that could get them maimed and killed.

John eyes his son again, sitting on his back legs now, hands busy by his mouth, licking and pushing back through his hair, “you want to take a real shower?”

All he gets in return a bunch of quick chirps and hand gestures. And he doesn’t leave the window sill, so he must not be in favor of the shower.

“Maybe we should both learn sign language.”

Stiles looks like he’s chuckling, and then signing something and waving.

“Please tell me that wasn’t a curse word.”

The chattering that follows is very offended. And the tiny chipmunk sitting in the window, is wearing that mischievous expression that belongs to his son. The same one he’s worn since he was a baby. 

John rubs a hand over his forehead, “your mother would be getting a kick out of this.”

He nods, goes back to cleaning himself, and John goes back to the baseball game.

——————

When Derek arrives late in the afternoon, he’s got a grocery bag tucked under his arm and he lets himself in. Which is fine, they knew he was coming back, and John did tell him earlier in the week to stop using the doorbell. He just didn’t think the kid would finally allow himself to enter without the permission every single time.

Stiles runs across the windowsill, leaps off it and lands on Derek’s shoulder, gripping his collar for dear life, back feet skittering for purchase and he chatters something excitedly.

Derek, with his face completely serious, tells John, “Stiles has seen better swings on a porch.”

Stiles stands up on his back legs and fist pumps, then chatters something else.

Derek blushes slightly, “someone needs to tell the ump to get off his knees. He’s blowing the game,” very flatly, eyes averted.

Then the chipmunk laughs so hard he falls off Derek’s shoulder, does a backflip midair and lands in John’s slipper.

“Chipmunk ninja skills,” Derek rolls his eyes, heading towards the kitchen as John chuckles. 

——————

Listening to them chatting back and forth while only understanding what Derek is saying, John is already certain they sound like an old married couple. He supposes they’ve spent an entire week together and a week in Stiles Time is more like a year. So, they probably should be bickering like they’ve spent every moment together for half their lives.

“I know you can swim, Stiles. The floaty is for relaxation… yes, in the kitchen sink… the side without the garbage disposal… it’s from a doll set, and yes, I had to buy it. In the store,” followed by a lot of exuberant chattering, “just get in the damn water before I force you in. You’ll feel more human if you do more human things,” exasperation leaking into the edges of his tone.

John swivels his chair, being careful to avoid the squeak, cranes his neck to get a view of the kitchen. Where Derek is standing with his arms crossed, staring down a chipmunk while the sink fills with warm water, and the chipmunk wildly chatters and throws his arms around before crossing them and mocking Derek. John stifles a laugh, then Stiles’s entire head rolls with his eye-roll and he jumps into the basin. Leaving a little splash. From here, he can’t see his head when he rises above the water again, but he can hear his exited response.

“Yes, it’s baby shampoo… well, I don’t know, we have to wash your whole body, it’s going to be hard not to get it in your eyes.”

It falls quiet for awhile, then the dish sprayer comes on with a gusty blast and the chipmunk squeaks. There are so many reasons John can absolutely see his son as a chipmunk. He pulls himself out of the chair when the ads come on, heading to the kitchen to oversee bath time. Peering over the edge of the sink, he’s met with something he never thought he’d see in his life. 

His chipmunk son is lounged on a mini-tube, floating around in a whirlpool that Derek must have created with his fingers. He chatters something at John when he sees him.

“It’s been about sixteen years since anyone has taken a bath in the kitchen sink in this house,” John tells him.

Stiles pats the water excitedly and grins at him. 

“I’m going to cook dinner if that’s okay, sir,” Derek informs him. 

“By all means,” John replies, looking first at Derek who shifts his weight on his feet, then to Stiles who nods enthusiastically, gesturing with his front paws and telling him something very important, “if it’s about my diet, I don’t need the translation,” he pats Derek’s shoulder, leaving the two of them to it, and returning to the game.

************

It isn’t until Stiles starts demanding umbrella drinks that Derek drains his tub. And it isn’t until another ball game and some couch time that Sheriff heads upstairs and the sleeping situation gets awkward.

“I’ll just sleep on the couch,” Derek offers, since Stiles already demanded he sleep here instead of heading home for the night.

“Don’t be weird, just sleep in my bed. We’ve been sleeping together for a week, I know you’re not going to roll me over and crush me to death. And this couch is not good for sleeping, nor is it even close to big enough for you to lay down on Big Guy.”

“And your dad?” who Derek can hear lingering on the top stop, even though he bid his goodnights. 

“He doesn’t care. Where do you think Scott sleeps when we have bro-overs?”

“Bro-overs?”

“A sleepover for bros, come on dude, seriously?” he slaps his own forehead and then slaps Derek’s, or tries anyway, but he mostly just catches him on the nose, “I guess I have to climb you to reach your forehead. So, whaddaya say Derek? Watch some Discovery channel and go to bed?”

“Discovery channel?”

“Maybe I’ll find more of my kind.”

“Your kind,” Derek sighs, “you’re a Stiles. There is no kind.”

“The one and only,” Stiles pats his chest, then cannonballs the TV remote, jumping up and down on channel buttons until he gets distracted by something on History. 

“Luckily,” Derek mutters, but doesn’t hide the smile that’s rising on his face, no one can see it anyway.

**************

Oh Holy Hale, that’s a smile. When Stiles tilts his head a little, he can see Derek’s reflection in the TV. And Holy Hale, that’s a smile. It’s the same fondly exasperated smile that everyone in Stiles’s life has for him (the ones that are fond of him anyway, so really, not that many). He calls it the Stimiles, okay so he’s working on that. But that’s not the point, the point is that Derek has one! It fades pretty quick, but he can still see it lingering in his eyes. Smize, smeyes? Ask Tyra.

Stiles shimmies back off the remote, sitting on Derek’s thigh, “popcorn?”

“Where is it?”

“The pantry, there’s a stovetop popper too,” he hops off his leg, hurries over, hearing Derek shifting off the couch and following him, “we could watch a movie or something. Typically for a bro-over we play video games, but I don’t think you know how. And I’m not very fit for teaching you right now. So we can Star Wars it up.”

“Star Wars?” he sounds very unimpressed.

“Or Lord Of The Rings. Or, or, or, wait for it,” he claws his way up Derek’s pant leg, “The Princess Bride!”

“Why?”

“Your mom’s favorite, my mom’s favorite. I still need to find my anchor, Derek.”

“Well,” he sighs, reaching for the popcorn popping supplies as Stiles takes his perch on his shoulder, “you already went through her stuff.”

“But it’s not like it’s going to hurt, right?”

“Sitting on the couch watching a movie with you would hurt just about anyone.”

“Just about,” Stiles agrees, “but it’s a good thing you have super healing abilities then,” he flicks Derek’s earlobe just for good measure. 

———————

They haven’t even made it to the duel on the cliff before Stiles falls asleep. And maybe it was inappropriate for an eight year old to watch this movie, but Mom was half nuts by the end anyway. (And he means half nuts in all the most respectable ways that a person with a terrible, horrible, awful disease that steals memories and personalty and eventually the body, could be.) But he does remember staying up too late and falling asleep against her side, or tucked under her arm while this movie played in the background.

He barely stirs, just long enough to mutter, “inconceivable,” when Derek scoops him up and carries him upstairs.

Argument about where he’ll sleep solved. He’s sliding in between the sheets on Stiles’s bed, smelling like toothpaste and sex appeal and muscles. And brood. And misery. And Derek. As soon as Stiles feels the mattress dip, he scampers over, curls up on his heart, and listens to the calm, steady beat of it until he’s lulled back to sleep.


	8. Chipmunky Ninja Moves Mastered(ish)

Chipmunky Ninja Moves Mastered(ish)

Stiles wakes up the same way he does every morning. Yep, every single morning. In a puddle of drool. Arms and legs strewn at odd angles. With morning wood the size of a Redwood. And Derek Hale’s warmth radiating all over him. Oh. That. Oh. No.

Instead of immediately freaking out and waking Derek up with his incredible hard-on pressed against his hip, he wakes him up by immediately freaking out and leaping out of bed to jump around and shout, “I’m me! I’m me again! I’m me. Wholly human and,” dancing around his room he catches a glimpse of his reflection on the darkened computer screen. And yep, that is, “um,” instantly putting both hands over his groin, “naked. Just all sorts of naked,” he backs up towards the door or the closet or somewhere, anywhere to get away from Derek’s blinking eyes. Blinking probably to attempt erasing every single image that Stiles just presented him that will probably burn in his retinas for all eternity, right up there in the mental images marked as Worst Things Derek Hale Has Ever Seen, “I am, I’m just gonna, uh…”

Derek chuckles, tosses his arm over his eyes, “part of the transformation.”

“Oh, the boner situation?”

And Derek? Derek pulls his knees up, tenting the sheet over his body, and, oh, oh. Oh, “oh, morning wood is just, yeah. That’s, okay, yep. Not gonna freak out about it. Nudity. That is what you were talking about. Yep. Nudity is part of the transformation. Part of the old shift. Part of the whole full bodied rodent becoming human again. Yep. Got it,” he dares turn his back to Derek. Why wouldn’t he? Fumbles around in his drawers for a pair of boxers and totally doesn’t trip at all when he’s trying to jump into them with both feet at the same time. Nope, doesn’t trip and fall back on his desk chair with the boxers at his ankles and his hands instinctively rising to cover his junk, and willing away a morning boner all at the same time. Because he is a multi-tasker like that.

“It’s a good thing I’m not a bird. I would be one of those idiots that flew into a glass window pane and broke my neck.”

Derek chuckles again. And Stiles realizes that is the most incredible sound. Rough, raspy in the morning, but unguarded. Probably still half-asleep. If anyone could be after that nice display that Stiles just put on.

He forces himself not to side-eye Derek where he’s laying there with the sheet pulled up to his chest, his beautiful arms on full display, face turned away and half hidden to give Stiles privacy. Okay, so maybe he side-eyes him a little.

Sighing, he leans forward for the boxers, taking inventory of his pale, awkward, gangly body as he goes, “looks like I’m still in one piece good buddy. So that’s a plus. I survived my first week in full shift, without so much as a scratch. Ha! I have full shift powers! You’re not the only one Derek! Just because mine is smaller, and mostly useless and…”

“We’ve been over this,” Derek sighs, “it’s not useless at all.”

“No. I know. Yeah. I totally know that,” smoothing a hand over his head, scratching the back of his neck. When he dares look back over at Derek (who is still in Stiles’s bed, by the way), his piercing eyes are just piercing holes right through Stiles. It sends a jolt of liquid lightning right down his spine and tingles rise up in his belly, doing chipmunky ninja moves right there where no one can see them.

He just stares for so long, so long. Without speaking. But Stiles can see it, or something, he can see something in the man’s eyes while he looks him over. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that long. But it was deep. Still waters and all. Before Derek sighs, pulls himself to seated and drapes his legs over the far side of the bed. Leaning forward while Stiles doesn’t look at his back muscles (because those things would kill a lesser man just for ogling them), and pulls his jeans on. 

So this is it. Wow. Okay. Spend a ten days pretty much inseparable and sleeping together and everything. And now it’s over. And that means all of it is over. Doesn’t it?

“So, um,” running a hand up the back of his head, it feels weird to have human hair under his palms again, “I, um, guess, thanks is in order?”

“For what?” Derek grunts, pulling his shirt on. 

“I, well, you pretty much did everything for me through all of this. So… I wish I could return the favor, I guess, I wish I could have been there for you when… you know. I mean, at least I didn’t have to die to achieve full shift. But it was probably…”

“It’s fine. Don’t thank me. Just don’t get yourself killed. Or accidentally shift in school this Fall.”

“Control Derek, I’m going to have to learn control. So, it’s not like, well, will you help me?”

His head only nods a tiny bit, but his eyes say loud and clear, ‘of course’ like it’s the easiest thing on the planet.

———————

It really isn’t that hard to learn control. He’s only a few days into it when he can fully shift and fully shift back without having to think much, “I’m awesome at this,” he tells Derek matter-of-factly when he shifts back into his human form in front of the Hale house where Derek is lounged back on the steps. He’s having the decency to look directly at Stiles’s eyes every time he appears like magic, all naked and awkward, in front of him. Or he’s just appalled to even consider looking anywhere but his eyes. Same difference.

It’s later when he shifts at his house, without Derek there, that he realizes something important. He’s been using the sound of Derek’s heart as an anchor.

“Damn it!” he face-palms his furry face, tries dancing around on his phone screen to get it to unlock, fails and has to run all the way to the loft. Avoiding all the things. All of things like cats, and dogs, and birds, and raccoons, and (raccoons?), and crazy jogger lady with her kids in the stroller, and cars, and buses, and wow, he stops on a street sign to take a rest. That was stupid. That was so stupid. So he has to have Derek around all the time to shift back? What the Hale kind of curse is that? Using a guy that can probably just barely stand him as an anchor. 

He shakes his head to himself, watches a cloud pass by, props his chin on his linked fingers. The evidence is right in front of him. He just is maybe having a hard time putting all the red string in the right places because it makes no sense. It makes no sense ever. In any realm. On any plane of existence. In any decade or era or lifetime. It would never make sense. There’s no form it would make sense in. There’s no coven, or gaggle, or pack, or destruction that it would makes sense in. That Derek Hale would actually, possibly, maybe, minutely, very very slimly have any inkling of caring for Stiles. As more than the annoying kid who talks too much and thinks too fast and saves his furry ass all the time, that he inherited with the kid he didn’t bite, but took under his wing anyway. Paw. Took under his paw. 

But if there’s a chance. No matter how slim it might be. If there’s even a tiny, itty, bitty chance. Then Stiles must know. 

He takes a deep breath and launches himself off the street sign, lands on the messenger bag of some lady riding a bike. Oops. Well, he’ll get closer faster. At least. Or she’ll notice him, freak out, and ride out in front of a bus on accident. He’ll take his chances.

When she turns to head the wrong direction, he leaps off. Tucks and rolls with his chipmunk ninja skills of course, and takes off full speed the rest of the way to the loft. 

What’s going to happen when he gets there? Is he going to change back and profess his crush bordering on insane love for Derek Hale? And expect him to feel the same? 

No. That’s not going to work. 

Damn it! He stops at the loft door, realizes there’s no way he can get in. Unless he can make enough noise for Derek to hear him. But it’s kind of late by now. Late enough that broodywolf is probably brooding in the Preserve. Or has gone to bed. Damn it!

“Derek! Derek!” pounding both fists down on the door, “Derek! Derek! Heeeeelllllooooo! Anybody?”

When he stops to catch his breath, over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears, he hears it. He hears the sound of that heartbeat. The slow, steady thump, thump, thump. It’s far away. And oh Holy Hale, he has super hearing too!!!! He totally has super hearing as a chipmunk! Or does he? No, wait, he’d have realized that before. If he did. As the heartbeat is nearing, the voice calls out, “I hear you, settle down,” the voice sounds the same as it would if he didn’t have super hearing, so that blows that theory. 

“Okay, Derek, I don’t get it. I can hear your heart. After spending however many nights with it right up against my ear,” face, paws, entire body, “I think it somehow became my anchor. You know, since it was the most consistent thing there for awhile, and let’s not even talk about how hard it’s been to sleep alone the last few nights. Because if we talked about that, then I’d be embarrassed, alright?” Stiles shakes his head, “don’t open the door,” he tells him when he hears that heartbeat right there, “just let me think for a minute. With some dignity still in tact. If I ever had any to begin with. So you’re the only one who can understand me when I’m a chipmunk. And you’re the thing that inadvertently became my anchor. And you set aside your entire life for like a week straight to do all the things for me that you did. And I just, I can’t make sense of this Derek. Because if this is what I think it is, then I might just think you might, maybe, possibly, care about me,” the last part squeaks out and he is so glad no one else can understand him right now. If there are any other wolf ears inside the loft, they’d be listening. But, ha! They can’t!

“We have a coded language Derek.”

There’s a pause, such a long pause that Stiles is certain the guy is retreating (except for that whole hearing his heartbeat thing), then finally, Big Guy says, “yeah. I guess we do,” it’s soft and it’s all sorts of encrypted with all the other answers to all the other things that Stiles was asking without actually asking them.

Super huge sigh, clasping his hands over his still beating heart to will it to stay in his body, “can you open the door now? I think I’m ready to be a human again. Except I have no clothes. No clothes at all.”

And maybe if Stiles wasn’t the underaged son of the Sheriff, Derek might say something like ‘you don’t need them’, but instead he says, “I’ll find something for you,” and the door slides open. To his face. His beautiful scruffy face. And shirtlessness. 

Stiles sighs, scampering inside and pulling himself up the leg of Derek’s sweats. He stops at his hip, where Derek cups him in his hand, brings him to his shoulder, and gives him a ride up the stairs to his bedroom. Pulling open the drawer for underwear and sweats, setting a pair of either on the bed. He turns his back. And waits.

************

Derek doesn’t turn back around until after he hears Stiles pull the pants up, the sound of the bed being sat on, and a sigh parting his lips. 

He’s pink-cheeked and biting his lip, eyes steady on Derek when he moves across the room. The pale expanse of his chest and abdomen on full display, distracting and gorgeous with the dying light of day streaming through the window. Derek takes a deep breath, moves to get a t-shirt, but long fingers clamp down around his wrist before he can pull the drawer open. Stiles is to his feet, standing toe to toe with Derek in an instant, his bottom lip tucked into his teeth and a mumbled, “screw it,” before he dives into Derek’s mouth. He charges right in like he owns the place, it’s easy to open up for him, get lost in the frantic rhythm of his explorations. It’s easy to hand himself over. 

He stops the kiss when Stiles’s hand lands palm down on his chest, right over his heart. Drawing back is the hardest thing he’s had to do in a long time, but he can’t let this go any further. Even though there are tingles threatening to rip his body apart, and a tightness in his chest that makes him want to draw Stiles into his arms and never let him go, “this is,” his breath is cut off, words meaning nothing and everything at the same time. Stiles’s lips are already red, burned with stubble, “I can’t do this to you.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You’re seventeen.”

“Yep. Sure am. And probably the only seventeen year old virgin left on the planet.”

“I’m not talking about sex.”

“Oh,” a pink flush floods his cheeks, but he holds his ground. His hand firm on Derek’s wrist, the other splayed on his chest, “it’s too late for the rest of it,” tapping the pad of his index finger a few times in reminder, “I already figured the rest out Big Guy. So, you’re not going to get rid of me by using excuses like age and my dad is the sheriff and I’m too young and inexperienced to know what I want and…”

He’ll keep talking all night if Derek lets him. So he doesn’t. Sealing his mouth over Stiles’s, receiving a squawk in return before he shakes off the surprise and starts kissing him back. 

************

All they did was kiss. For awhile. A little while. Fine, a long while. But Stiles feels like he’s drunk by the time he stumbles down the steps to go back home. Wearing Derek’s clothes, and hoping Dad doesn’t get home early for some ungodly reason. 

He pulls the building door open to the nighttime sky, nighttime sounds and sights. Breathes deep like it’s maybe the first time he’s ever breathed in his life. He feels the shift tugging at him, like he wants to turn chipmunk and scamper around chattering to everyone who will listen that Derek Hale is his boyfriend. Or something. He didn’t exactly ask. Well, he’s certainly his anchor. So that’s cool.

But is it cool? Or is Derek just stuck with him now? Did he only kiss him because he didn’t know what else to do? No. That’s stupid. Derek is big and kinda mean and all growly and claws when he wants to be, so if he didn’t want to kiss Stiles, he wouldn’t have. So it’s not an obligation, right? Or what if…

“Stiles,” it’s right behind him and he totally doesn’t jump and flail and turn into a chipmunk. Right there. In the middle of the sidewalk. 

Except Derek is laughing now. Like full-bodied laugh that sounds like wind chimes or something beautiful (but really, more like a full grown man laughing). 

“Okay, so maybe my control is lacking,” Stiles admits, running up Derek’s pant leg, hopping over to his arm and taking his perch on his shoulder, “but what the hell are you doing sneaking up on me?”

He’s still smiling, his eyes twinkling, reflecting the night around them. It does something weird to Stiles’s heart, makes it pound in his ears while the rest of him just kind of settles.

“You ran here, right?”

“I can’t exactly reach the pedals,” Stiles mimes driving.

If anything, it just makes the guy smile wider, “I came out to drive you home, but if you’re going to be that way about it,” his hand rises, cupping Stiles in his giant palm. And really, why isn’t this terrifying? Derek could kill him so easily.

Maybe it’s because he trusts him, “I won’t be that way about it! I’ll sit in the passenger seat, all nice and quiet and not adjust the nobs and not chew on the seatbelt. I won’t even eat granola in your cupholder, so ha!”

Derek’s smile twists from amusement to fondness, his eyes soft as hell, “going to shift back now then?”

“Here?” he can hear the squeak in his own voice. So manly, “in the middle of the sidewalk? Nuh uh, nope, no way.”

Derek looks around, shrugs and gathers the discarded clothing in his hands before making his way over to the Camaro. 

That whole part about being quiet and holding still, oh it’s out the window as soon as the engine rumbles to life. What? It’s in Stiles’s nature. And he’s pretty sure broodywolf loves it. Or strongly likes it. Maybe love is too potent of a word right now. Or maybe, Stiles looks across the car at him, catching sight of his scowl and dipped brows, so maybe he only puts up with it. But Stiles is pretty stubborn. And pretty persistent. And soon enough, Derek Hale will love him. (If he doesn’t already, that is).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had way too much stupid fun with this fic, there are future one-shots coming at you next, so make sure you subscribe to the series.
> 
> Watching the baby chipmunks in my yard while writing this... When my four year old was two, she called them chickamonkey. 
> 
> Snip, snap, snout, this tale is told out but if there are any requests for future chipmunky stories, I'm listening :) Thanks friends, I had fun, hope you did too! I'll hopefully see you over on the next story :)

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and supportive comments are awesome! Take care of yourselves :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Damn It!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28097061) by [FiaMac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiaMac/pseuds/FiaMac)




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